Taking Liberties (34 page)

Captain Luscombe had wanted her to be there as well. ‘Prisoners like to see their dead honoured. Only leads to riotin' if they ain't.' But she was reluctant to leave the hospital unattended so she and Joan watched the funeral of Lieutenant John Snodgrass, late of the American vessel
Pilgrim
, from the loft window, which had a view of the main compound.

‘Was he a white man?' she'd asked.

‘Yes, yes. Curious he tried to escape with a blackie, ain't it?'

In life, it appeared, Lieutenant Snodgrass had been popular with his fellow-Americans and his death now rendered him popular with the British, always generous to a fallen enemy once he'd fallen.

There was a prison band. Prisoners beat muffled drums.

There'd been a skirmish over what flag to lay upon the coffin, Luscombe had told her; the Americans threatening riot if it should be the Union flag, the British refusing to countenance the Stars and Stripes, which the rebel government had adopted the previous year and was now being flown by its shipping.

In the end Snodgrass went to his rest like a hero under the tattered, shot-holed spritsail of his captured ship.

It was evening before she and Joan felt able to leave the hospital and even then they had one more apppointment.

Lieutenant Grayle and his guards were waiting for them at Luscombe's house—as was a footman dressed in Stacpoole livery.

‘Webb! What are you doing here?'

‘Good evening, your ladyship. His lordship is in Plymouth and hopes you will join him at Government House. The carriage is outside.'

She was so tired that for a second it seemed to be Aymer who summoned her. Of course, she thought, Robert is his lordship now.

‘How delightful.'

She sent Joan back with Tobias to the inn they were staying at for the night—the old woman was exhausted—and instead got one of the guards to buckle the artificial hands on Martha's son.

‘They fit better now,' she told him. ‘It is time to start using them.'

‘I intend to, ma'am.' There was something new in his voice; his eyes were steady and looking forward.

She was suddenly immensely proud of him. ‘
Now
can I write to your mother?'

‘Not yet, ma'am.' He even smiled a little. ‘Wait a while.'

In the carriage, she tidied herself as well as she could, glad to be wearing black that hid some of the hospital's stains on her petticoat hem.

The Duke of Richmond, as Master-General of the Ordnance, had spared neither the public purse nor fraternal affection when ordering the building of the new Government House at Mount Wise, the current Governor of Plymouth being his brother.

As she followed Webb along a gallery, the Dowager realized that her time away from luxury had changed her; it was delightful to feel carpet beneath her feet, to be enfolded in silk-papered walls hung with good portraiture, but she was aware of the cost of these things as she had not been before. That sculpture of a nymph, for instance—a Bernini if she was not mistaken—would fetch a price that could purchase decent nursing and doctors for her hospital indefinitely.

The Earl of Stacpoole was in a room that gave on to a terrace. ‘I am sorry to surprise you, Mama, but I could not come to Plymouth without seeing you.'

‘Of course not.' She hugged him. ‘My dear boy, I am overjoyed. I hope you will come to T'Gallants, I am still camping out but—'

‘A flying visit only, I fear. Makin' arrangements for His Majesty's stay when he comes for the openin' of the marine barracks and the new dock. Goin' back day after tomorrow.'

‘And Alice? Is she here?'

‘Stayin' with the De Veres at Exeter. Asked me to convey her love.'

‘How did you know I was at the hospital?'

He tapped his nose; there had been plenty of people to tell him. He was resplendent in full court dress. The Order of the Garter shone on a coat of blue silk embroidered with silver that curved away to display a long gold satin waistcoat which in turn curved over a stomach somewhat fuller than she remembered it.

She was relieved that mention of the hospital did not seem to displease him; he seemed almost apologetic for the fuss he'd made. ‘Fact is, His Majesty's becomin' reconciled to the idea. Keeps being complimented on it by the liberal sort.'

She smiled. ‘That must be a new experience for him.'

There was a small table, set for supper for one. ‘I'd be happy to eat with you, Mama, but there's a banquet in town later and I'm representin' the King. Dreary but necessary.'

He sat with her while she ate; the pleasure that they were at ease with each other gave her an appetite.

‘Robert, I wish to consult you on the matter of Tobias. Your father gave him to me, if you remember, so I hope you will not mind if I grant him his freedom.' She had every intention of doing so whether he minded or not but, since he was showing generosity, she wanted to compliment him back in displaying due respect for the head of the house.

‘What a liberal you are become, Mama, you'll be wanting Parliamentary reform next. But I see nothing against it and he's your man now. I'd forgotten he was still enslaved.'

‘So had I.' The collar had seemed a mark of the man's dignity, so much a part of him that she had been startled by the reminder that it denoted servitude.

All at once the penduled plaster ceiling above her was replaced by stars and the smell of beeswax candles washed away by the slightest of salt breezes. She rocked lightly on an anchored boat . . .

‘I
said
, Mama, did you find the American woman's boy?'

She gave him her attention. ‘I beg your pardon, Robert. Yes, I found him.' She was curiously reluctant to expose Grayle's wounds to her son. She wondered how he'd known about her search—oh, of course, Alice had read the letter from Martha, or the Edgcumbes might have told him.

‘Then all's done. You can come home.'

‘Home?'

‘Mama, you have done all that could be expected for these fellows, it's time to leave it to those whose business it is to look after them.'

She thought of those whose business it was to look after them. Within days of her departure, the warehouse would be in no better state than the cottage had been. ‘My dear, the work has hardly started; the nursing of these men is slapdash to the point of cruelty. It needs method, better orderlies, more proficient doctors. The country cannot hold up its head until it treats these unfortunates as well as it treats its own men.'

‘Unfortunates? They came to these waters to sink our shipping.'

‘That is not the point. I am sure we are doing our best to sink theirs in
their
waters . . .'

‘They have no waters of their own. You appear to think America has right to its own sovereignty.' He was becoming testy and got up to move away from her.

She tried to placate him. ‘Of course not. But if you saw them, Robert . . . Once a man is wounded, his politics are immaterial, he is merely a wounded man. Our Lord certainly thought so and gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan for our instruction.' Dear, dear, she sounded like a dissenter's tract.

Robert had been striding up and down the room. He stopped at the table, tapping it with his fingers. The light glinted on the star on his breast. ‘I had not wished to mention this, Mama, since it shames us both, but I think you do not realize what joy you are giving to the opposition. Only three days ago, the Marquis of Selby spoke your name in the House of Lords.'

He leaned down to ensure she was sufficiently shocked. ‘Your name, Mama.
Our
name. As usual, he was ranting about coming to terms with the rebels. I will tell you his exact words. “The government could pursue with profit the example held up to them by the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole, mother to His Majesty's own equerry, and her recognition that wounded American prisoners are but men prepared to sacrifice their lives in the resistance of tyranny and must therefore be accorded the dignity of humankind and not that of animals, as should their country.” '

He took the chair opposite her. ‘You are being used, Mama. However well intentioned, you are providing the Whigs with ammunition to fire at us. Until then, as I say, the King had become reconciled to your activities but now he sees what they can lead to, as I do.'

She was as shocked as he intended her to be, and angry. Good God, did men twist
everything
to their political advantage? ‘Selby had no right to make capital of something which is innocent of politics.'

‘Perhaps. But he made it. I am told Rockingham and his dogs roared him on. Now do you see why you must come away?'

She folded her hands in her lap and considered. Without his eyes leaving her face, Robert leaned over, took a fork and finished the chicken
à la crème
left on her plate.

‘No,' she said at last. ‘They may twist it how they please, but this work is done in His Majesty's honour and you must point that out when you next speak in the Lords.' She put out her hand to touch his. ‘I know there are more sympathetic causes, my dear, but for some reason known only to God this has been put on my shoulders. I cannot abandon it.'

‘God has nothing to do with it, it is some obstinacy of your own.' He jerked his hand away so fast that the fork fell to the floor. ‘Very well, Mama. Since you refuse to accede to my wishes, you cannot expect to do so at my expense. I don't know how you will live if you persist in remaining in Devon, but it shall not be at T'Gallants. It is being sold.'

She remained calm. ‘You cannot sell it. It is my property.'

‘You have no property.'

True in its way, she thought. On the instant of her marriage she had become a femme covert, her existence covered by her husband's, her property his, the children his, with no rights to either. It had been her greatest fear that Aymer might cast her out, never allowing her to see her son again. He'd been entitled to do it; was freakish enough to do it; sometimes, when drunk, had threatened to do it. If he hadn't known
au fond
that no one would fulfil the role of countess so well, he
would
have done it.

It was a constant terror that had made her the woman she was: outwardly compliant but a secret manipulator, constantly shifting the pieces in the game of marital chess so that he might win yet keep her on the same board with the pawn that was her child.

She looked up at the man the child had become; he was looming over her against the candlelight so that she could not see his face. The figure was his father's—or soon would be.

Again she tried to conciliate him by mildness. ‘Nevertheless, T'Gallants was my dowry, along with much else; I brought it into the family. And, in justice, I am entitled to a messuage of my own,' she said.

‘You have one, the Dower House.'

It was a bark, like Aymer's. The law laid down. And suddenly the table was tipped to the floor, the decanter spilling wine on a Persian rug and she was on her feet, ready to rend, a lioness snarling at a cub that annoyed too much. ‘How dare you? How
dare
you?'

Instantly, he was reduced to a small boy. ‘But it was always to be sold when the lease was up. Father intended it.' He was gaping at her, as if caught in a schoolground peccadillo:
Not me, not me, it was him
.

‘He is dead. We are free of him. You award me a contemptible pension and I say nothing but I will give up neither the life nor the home I have chosen. Is that clear?'

The enslavement was over. He backed away from the harpy she'd become. In twenty-two years she had uttered no word against his father; he couldn't believe she was doing so now. ‘It's too late, Mama. It's done. Spettigue came round with the papers this afternoon. ' Still backing away, he added as if it would pacify her: ‘We got a good price for it, more than it was worth.'

She screamed: ‘How do you know what it was worth?' She went on screaming, astonished at herself but unable to stop the logjam of misery that had been piling up for twenty-two years sweeping out of her mouth, swirling and bumping her son around in a river of truths she had never wanted him to know—had never known herself until now.

‘I will never come back, I hated Chantries, I hated your father. I will not live on his land. He was a tyrant. He is dead, thank God, and I will not tolerate a new tyranny set up in his place. If I have to beg my bread through the streets of Plymouth, I will be a free woman at last.'

She didn't stop shouting until she saw him reach for the bell pull and hang on to it, staring at her. ‘You are gone mad,' he said. ‘You are a madwoman.'

At which point, she left in case she proved his point by hitting him . . .

JOHN Beasley had made a friend of one of Plymouth's more radical publishers, a man prepared to ask questions of the Admiralty's local representatives and get answers. It was from him that they received news of Josh's condition.

‘Bad, but they think he'll live,' Beasley told Makepeace. ‘The Admiralty's vaunting the new prison hospital as a place of miracles, apparently. He'll survive, Missus. A stubborn young fellow, our Josh.'

Obviously, however, recovery would not be swift. ‘Nothing we can do until he's better,' Beasley said. ‘I think it's time you went home.' He became surly—his way when he was uncomfortable. ‘Time I did, too.'

She was immediately contrite; he had spent weeks in her cause; of course he wanted to return to London. ‘I don't know what I'd have done without you,' she said.

‘What
will
you do?'

It was like being in a tugging triangle, Sally and Jenny at the apex, Josh and Andra in the other two angles. There seemed little she could do for Josh, yet to leave him, suffering, in prison was like abandoning a wounded comrade on the battlefield. Also, word was on its way to Andra that he had a passage to England if he could make the French coast. She had to be at Babbs Cove for that. On the other hand, she had been too long away from the little girls . . .