Now Face to Face (34 page)

“Is it a coffin or a purse?” asked the servant.

Death or wealth. She would just take a happy heart, which she’d had, once upon a time, before Jeremy’s death, before Harry’s. Every time she walked to Tamworth, she expected to see Harry step out from behind a tree. Harry and Gussy had used to sit out in the night under the oak tree, watching the fireflies, discussing the last days of Queen Anne, when the rivalry between Whigs and Tories had turned to hatred and vindictiveness. Gussy had liked Harry. Their last child, born after Harry’s death, after Jeremy’s, was named Harry Augustus. That had been Gussy’s idea.

The coal was coffin-shaped. Somewhere a child began to cry. Jane untied her apron and reached for the thick woolen shawl that hung on a peg by the door. She pulled on the leather handle of the heavy arched door that led outside.

“Where are you going?” Her mother’s question was sharp. “That is Harry Augustus I hear crying—Jane!”

A sudden gust of wind pulled her across the yard. She knew that if she looked back she would see her mother’s face at the window, so she did not look back, but stepped quickly across the stones dotting the muddy yard, then to the little white wooden gate in the stone wall, and then past the stables and barn into the shelter of the woods, the Duchess of Tamworth’s woods. She thought, I should have put on pattens—wooden soles raised on iron rings—for her own shoes, with their thin soles, were already damp from the leaves and cold of the ground. But she did not turn back.

The wind shook her skirts and whipped them around her; leaves, gold, crimson, orange—all shades—spun through the air around her. For once in her life, she was not with child. It was a heady sensation. The oaks and beech and horse chestnuts and elms of the Duchess’s woods were dropping their leaves. All Hallow’s Eve was around the corner, and Guy Fawkes Day lay ahead, and then Christmas. She stumbled a little over a root, or perhaps it was because the thought of Christmas made her think of her child, who had died at Christmas. He lay now in a little grave at the chapel of ease in Petersham, the hamlet where she and Gussy lived, near the village of Richmond. She had planted pansy seed and wood violets over his grave. Barbara had helped her.

Gussy was curate at Petersham’s chapel of ease and also clerked at Fulham, in the Bishop of London’s palace there. And now also for the Bishop of Rochester, at Westminster Abbey, which meant he was gone a good deal of the time. Jane stopped a moment to catch her breath. She was at the stream. It gurgled its way to wherever it went. She sat down among the damp leaves near the edge of the stream, held out her hand, and a leaf fell in it. Catching a leaf was good luck. She and Barbara and Harry used to fish in this stream—not that they ever caught a thing, but what fun they had, for Barbara always managed to make her gown wet, and then she would splash Jane. Fly, ladybird, north, south, or east or west. Fly where the man is found that I love best. So she and Barbara used to chant.

How far away seemed those days of girlhood. She was not with child because she and Gussy were not together. Why must you be gone so much? she said to him. They quarreled; her temper was shorter since the death of Jeremy. Her heart had cracked open, and she could not quite mend it yet. She and Gussy had quarreled, and she left him to visit her mother and father, and stayed longer than she wanted, wishing him to come and bring her home again. But he did not come.

Primrose, ribwort, rocambole, rodweed, rosa solis, rosemary, said her mother’s receipt book, a treasury of recipes handed down from mother to daughter, into which she had looked last night. Angelica and anise, the Duchess wanted. Broomwort and balm. Annie had sent over an herb pillow to take away bad thoughts. Caraway and chamomile. Pennyroyal and peony.

Last night, she’d said the words to her children. “Peony and pansy,” Amelia mimicked, making Thomas and Winifred double over with laughter. She slept with her children, a sow surrounded by sleeping piglets. An older child to their child, scolded her mother. Your place is with your husband. Thorn apple and thyme. Violet and willow. Again, again! her children had begged, until she could not say the words without laughing herself. Wintergreen and witch-grass. Wormwood and woundwort. Take me back to girlhood, when I had no sorrows and frets, only days in the sun with Barbara and Harry. What if my husband no longer cares?

She heard something. Was it a carriage? Was it Gussy come to take her and the children home again? The carriage was closer now. She saw it pitching from side to side down the road that led to Tamworth village, too fine a carriage for Gussy. The carriage crossed the narrow bridge under which the stream gurgled. No one ever came to the village. Excitement! The people would be beside themselves.

Smiling suddenly, Jane picked up her long skirts and ran like a girl, the girl she used to be, through the oaks and beeches and horse chestnuts as autumn leaves swirled and twisted through the air, toward the village. She would hide herself, just as she and Barbara used to do, and watch. She laughed a little as she ran, seeing herself hiding like a fool behind trees and cottages. Her mother would think her mad. But Barbara would have understood. Barbara would have run right beside her. Barbara would have said, “What, Gussy does not appreciate you any longer? Well, come here and let me dress you in this gown of mine, and put a patch upon this cheek—some rouge here, some powder there—and you just go to Gussy and make him see why he should love you again.” The thought of seducing Gussy so made Jane laugh aloud. If Barbara had been here, she would have had the courage to do it. Barbara would have made her. But Barbara wasn’t here, and all her own courage lay buried in the grave with Jeremy.

A
CUMBERSOME
carriage swayed and jolted into the main lane of the village of Tamworth. Children playing in the dirt of the road ran inside to tell their mothers. Women spinning, their front doors crooked open for a bit of air, took their feet off the trestle that turned the wheel, and stared. Old men, dozing in chairs propped against cottage walls, enjoying autumn sun, opened one eye and looked.

The carriage was lacquered brown and rode on large wheels with metal rims. A coachman drove it, and two footmen hung on the back. The coachman pulled on the reins and with a jingle of harness and much pawing and stamping the six horses in front of the carriage were halted at one end of the village green. Someone inside rolled up a leather shade and leaned out the window. It was a man, and he wore a long periwig. A tricorn hat, its high brims trimmed with braid, indicated the passenger’s position in society: He was a nobleman. The man rapped the carriage’s side with a long malacca cane. The coachman leaned down.

“The church,” the man said.

It was not difficult to find Tamworth Church; it was on the opposite side of the green, and it was also the village’s most imposing building, being the only large one. The coachman clucked his tongue to the horses and set them trotting down one of the small lanes that ran along each side of the green.

The coach lumbered under the spreading arms of a row of oaks growing on the east and west sides of the green, oaks so huge they must have been planted a hundred years ago. They shaded the cottages on each side of the green, which was empty this morning of any village loiterers or sheep or cattle. Everyone still in the village was watching from window and door and fence, but not in a way an outsider would notice. The carriage stopped before the low, gabled front porch of the church.

“T
IM SAYS
there are boys from the village here who need to speak with you,” Annie said to the Duchess.

The boys were talking even as they entered the Duchess’s bedchamber, interrupting one another, each anxious to be the one to tell her the news.

“A stranger is in the village—”

“In a grand carriage—”

“Foreign, French, Vicar Latchrod’s housekeeper said.” Which was enough to condemn the stranger, the war with France being still in recent memory. Anything within fifty years was in recent memory. The housekeeper might as well have said a highwayman.

“A scar across one side of his face—”

“His cane has a gold head, like yours, Your Grace—”

“He is in your chapel. Toby here looked through the window and saw.”

“Tim, go to the stable and have my carriage readied,” the Duchess said. “Annie, I need my black gown, the one with green ribbons. Perryman—never mind ignoring me, I know you are at the door listening—be certain I have hot bricks for my feet and the carriage shawl.” The Dutchess dangled herself on the edge of the bed, as Tim, still questioning the boys, walked them from the bedchamber.

“You cannot walk four steps without falling,” said Annie. “Who is this stranger that you must see him?”

“Never mind. Do as you are told.” It was the only secret she had from Annie, the only one, and it was not hers to share. Roger’s lover had come to see Richard Saylor’s chapel.

“Well!” said Annie, the word one long, outraged breath.

“A deep subject,” snapped the Duchess. “Are you going to dress me or must I ring for a kitchen maid?”

I
N THE
silence of the chapel, Philippe could hear his breathing. The vicar’s housekeeper had been rude, all but slamming the door in his face when he asked if the chapel was locked. The Duchess don’t lock the chapel, the woman had said, every bit as abrupt as any provincial in his own country. Among the gravestones had been a sundial with a carved stone pedestal. “Watch and pray,” were the words carved upon it. “Time passeth away like a shadow.”

The church had been designed by a countryman of his, one of those invading Normans who had come over with William the Conqueror in 1066. The influence of another countryman, Le Vau or Mansart, was here, too, in this chapel, built almost seven hundred years later to honor the memory of Richard Saylor, famed warrior. Atop a table tomb lay a marble figure, worthy of Bernini, the great Italian sculptor King Louis XIV of France had patronized. It was a figure of Richard.

But Philippe limped forward to a marble column, atop of which was a bust of Roger Montgeoffry, the Earl Devane, ordered by his countess, Barbara, no expense spared. The likeness to Roger was striking. Whoever sculpted it had been singularly gifted. Yes, Barbara had chosen well, but then Philippe had known she would. Her uniqueness had been there in the bud of a girl Roger had married but did not yet know he loved, uniqueness combined with beauty.

How labored his breathing was. He was the only living thing here. On the wall was a huge bronze plaque, giving the Earl’s birth and death dates, naming his wife, and then listing the battles in which he had distinguished himself. Philippe put his gloved hand to the plaque to trace the last words: “How like an angel came I down.”

“Magnificent, Barbara,” he said aloud and in French. There was a code among gentlemen, among warriors, that an enemy deserved honor for a deed well done.

He closed his eyes, saw bayonets flashing in the sun, fifes playing, pennants waving, clouds in a blue sky floating. A king, large hat shadowing his face, on a restless stallion whose bridle was studded with silver and diamonds and glinted in the sun; young officers on horseback, all dressed elaborately, uniforms blazing with satin bows and lace ruffles and jewels and medals, wigged and hatted as if for a ball.

But it was not a ball, but rather a military review for their monarch, King Louis XIV, the greatest monarch the world had ever seen. Before that monarch stretched thousands of foot soldiers, France’s finest, stepping smartly into position, performing their drills before their king. It was a memory of youth and valor, of honor and war.

Clumsily—the limp left him without grace—he knelt on one knee and pulled a rosary of pearl and amethyst from a pocket. He began to finger each bead slowly, saying prayers for Roger, whom he had loved, and who had loved him. It was love, he had told Barbara, and that was true.

T
HE
D
UCHESS’S
carriage rattled down the avenue of limes. The Duchess had done honor to the importance of the occasion, wearing jewels and starched green ribbons on a formal black gown; a velvet-and-fur cape; black damask shoes with gold lace appliqué on their sides and great silver buckles in their middle; black silk stockings; a hoop, petticoat, undergown. A diamond or two glittered discreetly amid the folds of her cap. She wore diamonds in her ears; she had even insisted on a spot of rouge on each cheek, as well as a moon-shaped patch at the corner of one eye.

Within moments the carriage was in the village, and her coachman stopped it on one side of the green. The Duchess leaned out the window; there was the Prince’s carriage, its coachman leaning against the side waiting, postilions playing dice on the stone steps of the church entrance. She took a deep breath. He would have to pass her carriage on his way to wherever he was going. Observing her, missing not a movement or expression, Annie sat in the corner. The Duchess looked down at her hands. She had had the vanity to wear gloves, leather gloves with pearls sewn on the crisscross design stitched across their tops.

“He is coming out of the chapel, Your Grace.”

The coachman went back to stand by the lead horses and to steady them when the other carriage should pass. The Duchess clutched the edge of the window with both hands. She saw him. He was walking across the graveyard. He limped. Yes, Barbara had said he had a limp. Two servants ran to open the carriage door for him. He was climbing into the carriage. His periwig was thick, curling, his clothes rich, his cloak lined with scarlet. The carriage was starting up. His coachman whistled to the horses and cracked a whip over their heads. The carriage jolted forward.