Now Face to Face (54 page)

“Who?”

“That man, Laurence Slane.”

Annie frowned, stared down into her wine. “Perhaps he’s seen her portrait in London. There is one at Saylor House. He might have seen it there.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’ll go see to him.”

“No, not yet. You’re exhausted. Sit here by the bed awhile longer. Tim told me Jane gave Slane the syrup of poppies. Slane is going nowhere this night. We’ll ask him tomorrow how he knows Barbara.”

Annie sipped her wine. “I’ll look in on him before I go to bed.”

I
N THE
middle of the night, Annie opened her eyes and listened a moment, before turning over on her side. This was an old house, always shifting, always groaning, creaking, settling. This would teach her to sit up late by the fire and read novels that were better off burned. Would Moll be faithful to the man she’d married but did not love? I’ll wake earlier than usual and read awhile before beginning my duties tomorrow, she thought.

T
HE
D
UCHESS
stared down at the bed in which Slane had last been seen.

“We’ve searched the house,” said Annie. “I do not understand. If Jane gave him syrup of poppies—”

“I saw her do so,” said Tim, defensively. Somehow, without a word, Annie had managed to imply Slane’s disappearance was Tim’s fault.

“So you keep saying.”

The Duchess pursed her lips. “You’ve looked in every chamber?”

“Every chamber.”

“It is a mystery,” said Tim.

“Walk to Ladybeth and see what Jane says.”

The Duchess was sitting before the large window in her bedchamber when Tim returned. She was thinking of Barbara and of Tony, of his insistence that Tommy Carlyle was to be their representative to the House of Commons now; of Tony’s dismissal of John Ashford, of Tony’s marriage. “It’s going quietly,” Abigail wrote. “No quarrels.”

“Mrs. Cromwell was resting, and so I could not speak with her, Your Grace, but her mother, Lady Ashford, said that Mrs. Cromwell had said earlier the actor was sleeping when she left him last night.”

“Go outside, Tim, look around, see if you see footprints, anything out of the ordinary.”

Hyacinthe kidnapped. How Barbara must be grieving. Too far, she’d sent her too far away. Walpole was to be dismissed at any moment, so the Duchess’s letters said. How did Walpole and Diana do? Tony’s earringed minion said that Walpole had not done all he ought for Roger, for Barbara, about the debt. Was it true? Walpole’s friendship with Roger, his relationship with Diana, made the betrayal doubly deep, made Walpole a man not to be trifled with. If he’d betrayed them all, as Carlyle said, he was stronger, more ruthless than anyone imagined.

She tapped a finger against a cheek. A sweeter day today than yesterday. Spring. Richard had loved Tamworth’s spring. How did Slane know Barbara? The Duchess was dozing before the large window in her bedchamber when Tim returned.

“Wagon tracks cross part of the drive.”

The Duchess pursed her lips.

“Annie says to tell you the syrup of poppies is gone from the stillroom.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

S
LANE LAY ON HIS BED IN HIS LODGING ROOM IN
L
ONDON.
Around him sat the key leaders of the plot: Lord North, Lord Arran, Dr. Freind, Lord Cowper, Will Shippen, Lady Shrewsborough, the Duchess of Ormonde, Harry Goring, the Duke of Wharton, the Duke of Norfolk, and he who was clerk, messenger, keeper of papers, and friend: Gussy, the Reverend Augustus Cromwell.

The Bishop of Rochester was not present. Sir John Ashford was on the street, keeping watch. “Salt of the English earth,” Rochester had called him. It is true, thought Slane, and of his daughter, too.

Freind, a physician, had taken off the bandage and was examining Slane’s head. Slane tried not to groan. He had thought he would die during the journey. He’d lain in the back of the wagon as it lurched through the muddy roads, and thought: Let my head separate from my body, let me have a second, a single second, in which it does not pound.

Freind opened the jar of syrup of poppies and smelled it, as the others attempted to explain what had occurred.

“To give him credit, Rochester’s wife is quite ill. The physicians attending her are saying her illness is fatal.” Lady Shrewsborough was speaking. Aunt Shrew, Slane heard Tony call her in his mind, but to Slane, she was Louisa, his dear Louisa. Is the Duke of Tamworth here? he wondered. Of course not. I’m ill, he thought, very ill.

“Rochester’s wife has consumption,” said Freind, quietly, as he leaned over, putting his head to Slane’s chest.

“He had called a meeting,” Aunt Shrew was saying. “After all, the invasion is all but here. It took days for the Duke of Norfolk to arrive, and that made Rochester even more impatient. ‘Will it take days when the invasion comes?’ he snapped. ‘It’s winter,’ I told him, ‘you know how impossible the roads are.’ He wanted details of everything, how North and Arran had divided up the country into military districts, how many men could be counted upon as troops, how the Scots clans were doing, what were their numbers, who led them. ‘Lord Russel is reconnoitering the north, Slane the south,’ we told him. ‘We haven’t full details yet. You know that.’”

“
I
told him,” said Wharton, “that Sunderland will side with us, if he sees that there may be a military victory. And that if Sunderland came to us, there are four others among the ministers who would do the same.”

“He wanted a counting of the monies collected, and that is where, as the saying goes, the fat hit the fire.” Aunt Shrew slapped her hands together, her many bracelets jangling.

“Only a tenth of the money is in our hands,” said Wharton, “but we have pledges for much of the rest.”

“How much?”

Unbearable to speak, unbearable. Tears came to Slane’s eyes, and seeing them, Freind took his hand, felt his pulse. Aunt Shrew sat down on the bed, and Slane groaned. She took Slane’s hand from Freind.

“We have promises for ten thousand pounds,” said Wharton, “and the rest of us will make up an additional thirty thousand the day an invasion ship is sighted—the day, I swear it.”

I brought back pledges, thought Slane. Charles will, too, when he arrives. Why didn’t Rochester wait?

“Once Ormonde lands,” said Aunt Shrew, “I know ten merchants here in London who will open their coin chests to us, a certainty of at least ten thousand pounds more. We have ten men poised to ride all over England alerting men to rise, collecting coin, another ten thousand pounds, perhaps twenty thousand. It can be done. It was done for Charles I, and his son Charles II. I tried to tell Rochester, but he would not listen.”

“He became furious, said we played at invasion, we had not done our parts well enough. He insisted we write to Ormonde and tell him to cancel the entire expedition,” said someone.

The faces Slane looked at, when he could bear to open his eyes, were blurred. Listen to the voices, he said to himself. They will tell you everything.

“We have a ship ready,” said Aunt Shrew, “to send to Ormonde. Rochester refused to countenance our sending it, if you can believe that. He struck Goring, who told him we would send it anyway; he would have choked Wharton, if Gussy had not stopped him. As it was, he was foaming at the mouth in his anger, calling us dolts and idiots. The insults he gave were unendurable. If I were a man I would have challenged him to a duel. He told us we must call off the invasion. Great bloody coward, to leave us at the last moment. It is always confused at the last moment. I ought to know; he ought to, too, as much as he and I have seen in our lifetime. The younger Rochester would have done it.”

“Rochester was always one to twist with the wind,” said Lord North.

“Perhaps Rochester is right.”

Slane opened an eye. It was the Duke of Norfolk who spoke, and Will Shippen, standing just behind him, nodded, or so it seemed to Slane. Damn Rochester, thought Slane, to divide us further now.

“And I say, nonsense,” said Aunt Shrew. “We have this young Christopher Layer and his rebellion within the army. We may never have that again.”

“King James has faith in me. You’d think Rochester might,” wheezed Lord North.

Is there anyone other than Wharton and Gussy who is not a hundred years old? thought Slane.

“I’ve thought hard on this, Slane,” said Aunt Shrew, “Ormonde invading with the Irish on leave from the French army, the arms he’ll bring. There are the arms we’ve already collected, waiting in cellars and barns for us. We have three risings we can count upon. We have Layer’s rebellion. We can do it, Slane.”

“Hear, hear.”

Their backbone is showing at last, thought Slane. As for his dear Louisa, she was all backbone.

“There’s more.”

It was Gussy. Good Gussy, thought Slane, I’ve brought your wife. Do you know? Was Jane in the chamber? No. Of course, she was not. He had a vague memory of waking to find her dressing. She had been pulling the gown Gussy, or rather he, had bought her over her chemise, so that he saw, as much as he could see with his head the way it was, her bare shoulders and neck. Fetching, he thought he remembered saying to her. He’d embarrassed her.

“Rochester sent a letter to Paris,” said Gussy.

This was worse than Rochester leaving them at the last moment. Slane lay still on his pillows.

“How?”

“He used someone other than me to write it. George Kelly, you know him.”

“Yes.”

A good man, a steadfast Jacobite, a courier and messenger, completely trustworthy.

Slane could hear self-reproach in Gussy’s voice. Yes, Gussy would take much of the blame on himself, unlike North and Arran, who had great and onerous responsibilities, yet did not discharge them well enough. “They are weak links in our chain,” Slane had written to Paris. He had no doubt why Rochester had become angry at them. Their planning had been too vague and trusted too much to chance. I know they’re old fools, Louisa had said, but one of them is brother to the Duke of Ormonde. He must be consulted. And they’re all we have, Slane. Beggars can’t be choosers. That was why he and Charles had made these journeys, to cover for North and Arran.

“What did it say?”

“Tell him.” Aunt Shrew was sharp. “Go on. Let him hear the worst. He’s already been half killed by falling off his horse.”

“There is no union, no spirit. Tories are worried for the election and little else. Too many decline to join. Any schemes are wild and impractical, and cannot succeed.”

There was a silence in the chamber.

Rochester should have toured the country with me, thought Slane. Then he’d have felt differently.

“They’ll understand in Paris that it is Rochester’s opinion of things here. We are a month from invasion. They won’t know their heads from their tails,” said Aunt Shrew.

“I’m going to Paris,” Slane said. He could almost hear the sigh of relief. “Write it all down for me—everything: the quarrel, what you think you can pull together, what you have done already. God, Freind, give me the syrup.”

Slane held tight to Aunt Shrew’s hand. He had to sleep. Only the syrup of poppies allowed him some rest, when the pain stopped. “You’ll see I’m put on a ship,” he said to her, “see I get to Paris.”

“He ought not to go,” said Freind.

“He must.”

She brought Slane’s hand to her withered, powdered, rouged cheek, the bracelets making their music. “I will see to it. You drink your syrup and whatever else this bag of bones who calls himself a physician prescribes, and when you wake, you’ll be in Paris. You tell them to never mind what Rochester has said to them. You tell them he no longer leads us, but that we may lead ourselves. You’ve ruined your eyebrow, Laurence Slane. It breaks my heart to see your handsome face marred. If I could kiss it and make it well, I would.—Oh, your letter. I’m forgetting your letter.”

She reached into the bosom of her gown and pulled out a small, folded square.

“It is from your mother.”

Dear God in heaven, thought Slane. How does she know where I am? Who in Paris has been talking to her? No one is to know where I am. Are the weak links not only here, but stretched all the way to Paris, too?