Now Face to Face (91 page)

“You may put me down for two hundred and fifty pounds,” said Andreas.

“You’re not to tell Wren a word of your plan of the townhouses,” the Duchess said to Pendarves, very sternly, once the carriage was driving away. “He’ll begin to talk of design and forget that we wish to keep this secret.”

“What do you think Andreas will do when he knows about Pendarves’s lease?” Colonel Perry asked her.

“He’ll want me to pay the notes he holds, but I’ll go to the King and cry, and since he also wants the King’s favor, wants to be made an earl, he’ll have to be gentle.” Barbara’s tone was more flippant than she felt.

“I hope it’s as easy as that,” snapped her grandmother.

Such an odd feeling I had, thought Barbara, standing there, talking with Andreas and Wren, that I won’t see the Virginia garden made. The slaves’ song for the dead was in her mind, but it was lost in the carriage stopping, and her rush to go upstairs to her bedchamber and change her gown. Thérèse was there to help, but Barbara, still angry, still unforgiving, stopped her. Today she was to present Thérèse to the Princess of Wales at Leicester House. The last of her family, save her dog, was gone.

“Bathsheba is my maidservant now.”

Those fern-frond eyes of Bathsheba’s flicked once at Barbara as Bathsheba handed her a gown. Sweet Jesus, thought Barbara, have I taken on an Annie?

“Wait for me downstairs,” Barbara said to Thérèse.

“Yes, madame.”

“I didn’t want to weep before her,” she said to Bathsheba the moment the door was closed behind Thérèse, “not that it is your place to have to know that. I don’t wish her to leave. I regret being talked into this. I will miss her. You’re not to lecture me with looks and glances. I won’t have it. I receive enough lectures from my grandmother and Annie. All right. Now, did Caesar White find the cradle yet?”

Caesar and Montrose were searching in the warehouse for a lovely cradle Roger had had made for his hope of their child, not knowing there would be no children. She’d never told him she was barren. It was going in the kitchen, for Bathsheba’s boy.

Bathsheba shook her head.

“Where’s your child?”

Bathsheba didn’t answer, kept her face empty, an emptiness that always touched Barbara’s heart.

“My mother told you to keep him in the kitchen, out of my way, didn’t she? Never mind her. You bring him with you when you come to dress me, when you do your work for me. No feathers today.”

Everyone was wearing them now. Herbs, thought Barbara, Bathsheba knows herbs and flowers, and when spring comes, I’ll have her twine them all in my hair. Perhaps we’ll twine them into a necklace for me to wear. Herbs in the tobacco—she turned slowly, so that Bathsheba could straighten frills and ribbons, pull out and fluff lace—there’s an idea. The snuff from First Curle tobacco was going to be presented to His Majesty as her grandmother’s New Year’s gift.

Outside, in the hall, Harry barked at her, then ran down the stairs. He’d run to Thérèse, then back to her—a habit of his, to run himself to nothing between them. She had to stop a moment. She touched the collar at her neck. Her household, the family she’d made for herself, was undone now. Thérèse had read Tommy’s letter, asked to go into service in the Princess’s household. No, said Barbara. Yes, said Colonel Perry; her desire to move to the Princess’s household has nothing to do with you nor her regard for you. She has her own dreams, which you must allow. She’s my family, said Barbara, the family I made when Roger and I could not make one. Everyone is leaving—Harry is gone, and Hyacinthe and Charlotte, now Thérèse. It hurts me. I feel left alone. I feel afraid. Another family will come to you, said Colonel Perry, in time. Allow Thérèse her dreams. We must never interfere in another’s hopes. It is hard for me to let go, Barbara told him, particularly of those I love. All the more reason to learn, he replied.

The dead are in the child who is wailing, in the firebrand that flames, in the fire that is dying. The dead are not dead, so the slaves sang.

A dozen memories swirled in Barbara’s mind: Thérèse and Hyacinthe; the dogs and her brother in the garden in France, in a gondola in Venice, on a cypress-wooded terrace. Make me beautiful, she’d said to Thérèse, for Roger. Roger, she thought, Devane Square begins to rise again. But my heart isn’t in it the way I thought it would be.

I
N THE
bedchamber, Bathsheba carefully smoothed the riding habit Barbara had stepped out of, opened a little bag at her waist, and sprinkled lavender and geranium in the folds. So much to learn. Thérèse at her, Annie at her, with all the things she must learn. The mistress of this house had violet eyes that looked coldly upon her. The other servants sneered. Gypsy, they said. Witch.

A cradle for the child, Lady Devane had said, a lovely cradle with cherubs carved upon it to watch him as he sleeps.

I can’t bear to see your idiot, Violet Eyes said. Keep him out of my sight or I’ll have him put in with the horses.

We’ll live in the townhouse, Lady Devane said, and you will have the kitchen and the chamber beside it all for your own. You will be housekeeper and servant to me, Bathsheba. Can you do that? I think you can. When your child grows large, we can teach him to be a stable boy. I think he will like the horses. I think he will do well with them.

A whole chamber; a cradle for her son, who would be a stable boy. Bathsheba pressed in lavender, geranium with nimble fingers, long and clever fingers. It might have been love and good fortune she was pressing in. It probably was.

D
OWNSTAIRS, THE
Duchess was lecturing Thérèse.

“You remember whom you began with. You remain hers even if you do go to them. She has been good to you, better than you deserve.”

“As Mademoiselle Fuseau well knows,” Colonel Perry deftly steered Thérèse to Barbara, who had just stepped into the chamber.

“Tommy Carlyle is not here yet,” said the Duchess.

“We must wait, then.”

“You cannot, and you know it. The Princess will be offended.”

“Everything I do offends her,” said Barbara. If the Princess felt gratitude, she was not showing it. The great are monsters who must be forever fed, cannot stay full, Carlyle had told her. One day, if you stay among them long enough, you’ll be like them, too.

No, she’d said.

Yes, said Carlyle. No one escapes.

“Nonetheless, go on,” said the Duchess. “We’ll send him on if he arrives here. Likely he is already at Leicester House, proclaiming to one and all how clever he is, how he has arranged all this.”

“He did arrange all this.”

“You’re too softhearted.”

“He’ll ask about the jewel,” said Barbara. “I’ve given it to the Duchess of Kendall, but she has not said anything yet.”

“Tell him that,” said the Duchess. “He won’t like it, but there it is.”

“What is that?” Barbara pointed to a hat Thérèse had crushed in one hand.

It was one of Hyacinthe’s.

“Never mind,” Barbara said. “I know whose hat it is. Come, Thérèse, we must leave.”

Thérèse went from one to another, very quiet, very pale. She feels this, too, thought Barbara. Oh, Thérèse, I never thought we’d part. Depend upon nothing but change, said Colonel Perry. It is the very nature of life. Barbara saw Pendarves press some coins into Thérèse’s hands. She smiled to herself. She was always finding coins in the pocket of her gown or in some chamber to which Pendarves knew she’d go. Debt fairies leave them, he said. He was far too kind to survive living with her mother.

In the carriage, Barbara and Thérèse were silent. The quarrel between them was still too fresh. I cannot believe you wish to leave me, Barbara had said.

It is service to the future Queen, Thérèse had replied. Please understand.

“Listen to me,” Barbara said now, as the carriage made a sharp turn. “Mrs. Clayton is the favorite servant of the Princess. I am told she is a good woman; her loyalty to the Princess is well known. She will be watching you to see how you serve, and it is she, besides the Princess, whom you must please. There will be jealousies among the women of the bedchamber; there always are. Mrs. Selwyn and Mrs. Pollexfen do not like Mrs. Clayton, Carlyle tells me. They may try to advise you wrongly, so that you make foolish mistakes; therefore, listen only to Mrs. Clayton. Take your orders from her and her alone. You will encounter many petty quarrels. I tell you this from my own experience now as lady-in-waiting. People are always looking to quarrel. Try to take no sides, to do your work and be discreet. Mrs. Clayton values discretion above all else, as does the Princess.”

“You forgive me?”

“No.”

They jolted down the streets that led to Leicester House. The carriage stopped. It ends, thought Barbara. A Leicester House footman was holding open the door.

“I have loved you more than a servant. I wish you well.”

Barbara reached across the space that separated them and held out her hand. Thérèse took it.

In the house, a footman led the way to a long drawing room. There sat the Princess, surrounded by her maids of honor, her ladies-in-waiting. The Princess saw Barbara and nodded. Her eyes gleamed.

She is pleased, thought Barbara, grateful that I give Thérèse. Does she finally begin to see I wish her no harm? She looked for but did not see Carlyle. He should be here.

“I must speak with you,” the Princess said, and Barbara followed her some distance from the others. She is going to thank me, thought Barbara.

“I have some sad news,” said the Princess. “…hanged,” Barbara heard. “They found him this morning.”

“I don’t understand,” Barbara said. She didn’t.

“Get Lady Devane some water,” the Princess said to someone. “Of course it is a shock. We are all shocked.”

“I
AM
afraid. Your name is upon broadsheets pasted everywhere. I want you to leave England. It’s a sign, I tell you. I’ve felt it since I saw the broadsheets: You must leave. I should have known how despairing he was. No one would receive him. People would not talk to him when he went to drawing rooms. I knew how proud he was. Tony and I quarreled over it today. He says I blame him for the death, which I never said. He said the fault is no one’s. No one’s! How can that be? Isn’t it, really, when all is said and done, all our fault? I gave the Duchess of Kendall a sapphire so that she would cajole the King into giving him an interview. ‘Hurry,’ I told her. ‘He is in a bad way. Five moments of time will satisfy,’ I told her. ‘The simple fact of the King’s receiving him, of it being known, will mean so much, help him to feel he may establish himself again.’ And do you know what she said today, about his death? ‘Now I won’t wear the sapphire. It will be bad luck,’ she said. He used to spend hours entertaining her, entertaining her dreadful nieces, telling them all the gossip, the rumors, gathered like so many thorned flowers, to amuse them. Is that all it meant to her?”

Tommy Carlyle had hanged himself.

Tears were rolling down Barbara’s face.

I love you, Barbara, Slane thought. The returning of Hyacinthe’s collar had hurt her. The continuing vendetta against Walpole tired her, as did the maneuvering over Devane Square. I no longer draw an honest breath, she said to him. I must hide my thoughts from morning until night. How did this happen?

Slane was part of her dishonesty. He knew it, knew the tension his continuing presence created for her. She has too much heart for court, said Louisa. We ought to have known it.

“No man knows the heart of another,” he said. “I could decide tonight to kill myself, and your caring for me wouldn’t stop it, if that was what I had decided in my heart, if I felt that alone, that desperate.

“Who else will die before it is ended? ‘No man is an island…. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main—’”

He grabbed her hands.

“Did you do all you could? Were you kind, forebearing, patient?”

“Not always.”

“Who is,
always
? Were you so for a good portion of the time? You are not God, Barbara; you cannot command another’s living or dying. It was his choice. He had his own life, his own contract with his own God. I was taught that it is a sin before the eyes of God to take my own life, but, under certain circumstances, I would take my life and then, my chances with God. Now, who are these tears for? For Carlyle, who is dead, or for you, who, perhaps, were not all you meant to be to him? You’re not a saint. You aren’t, Barbara. And don’t quote John Donne to me again. I know every man’s death diminishes me. But what about every man’s birth, every man’s triumph? If I must partake of the loss of all, may I not also partake of the joy of all? Isn’t one man’s triumph also mine? It must be so. It has to be so.”

He’d just received word that Walpole was going to try to convict Rochester on a bill of pains and penalties. It was a bold, brilliant maneuver. It meant Rochester would not go before a court of law. Walpole hadn’t the direct proof he needed—a letter in Rochester’s writing, or a reliable witness who would say, Yes, he is head of the invasion. So the minister would introduce a motion to make Parliament a court. Parliament need follow no rules of common law, might be presented with any and all evidence, no matter how flimsy. Walpole changed the rules, so that he might win.