The Best of Men (51 page)

He opened his eyes and looked about, completely disoriented until he recognised the hangings on Seward’s bed, upon which he was lying fully clothed.

“Finally you are awake,” said Seward, coming in. “You’ve slept for over ten hours.”

“How did I get here?”

“Habit must have guided you, for you were almost insensible when you arrived.”

Laurence squinted at him. “When was that?”

“You stumbled in about midday and fell on my floor. I spoke to you, but you were incoherent, and then unconscious. What on earth was the cause of it?” Laurence felt for the bottle in his doublet with his left hand, and passed it to Seward, who sniffed at the contents. “Belladonna may be one of the ingredients – dangerous in any quantity. Let me see your other hand.” Seward unwrapped the bandage; it was dark with dried blood and glued to the cuts, which began to burn and bleed as they were exposed. “How did you acquire these injuries?”

“My brother challenged me to a duel last night, after our sister’s wedding. I had to take his sword away from him.”

“Why did you quarrel?”

“I don’t want to discuss it.”

“The deeper cut will require stitching. Let us go into the other room, where the light is better.” Laurence obeyed, and Seward sat him down in
a chair. Though still mildly stupefied, he had to swallow back nausea as the needle dug into his skin, and after a while he stopped watching.

“Seward,” he said, “in a few days’ time Falkland will talk to the man who saw Hoare opening his correspondence. A friend of mine, Isabella Savage, is helping to arrange the meeting.” He described his earlier conversation with Falkland in the stables, and his hurried ride to Great Tew. “Falkland’s wife was in such a panic over this urgent summons that I became nervous about it myself. So I came here and managed to find his quarters, but his servant said he was in conference with the King. That was when the drug started to overwhelm me. My heart was racing, and yet I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. I don’t remember any more.”

Seward was studying Laurence’s face, in between stitches. “I could not but notice, as you entered, that you were wearing a most captivating scent – attar of roses, orrisroot, musk, and a touch of frankincense, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I didn’t know you had such a keen sense of smell,” Laurence remarked.

“Who is this woman Isabella Savage, and why should she volunteer to assist Falkland?”

“Lord Digby is her guardian. Digby hates Colonel Hoare.”

“Ah, I see: it will be as convenient for them as for you, if Hoare falls from grace. But that does not explain the perfume. Was it because of her that you and your brother came to violence?”

“In part.”

“My dear boy!” Seward tied a neat knot with the thread and snipped off the excess with a pair of scissors. “And on your sister’s wedding night! I hope you were discreet.”

Laurence thought of Lady Morecombe and began to laugh. “I’m afraid we weren’t, though it wasn’t exactly our fault.”

Seward rose and went to his cupboard, from which he selected various
jars and a pestle and mortar. “You need a poultice, to stop the wound from suppurating,” he said, and they were quiet for a while as he prepared it. “Just watch out where desire leads you,” he advised, on his return.

“You speak from experience,” Laurence observed, smiling.

“Indeed I do. Now, I have some news for you, on the subject of our regicides. Since my return to College, I had a most fruitful chat with John Earle. Pembroke sent him a letter through Lord Falkland.”

“Yes, yes, I knew about that. What did Pembroke want?”

“To reconcile with Earle, despite the political differences that had caused them to argue. Earle said he’s in Pembroke’s debt. He had been Pembroke’s chaplain at Court in the early thirties, and was bestowed the rectory of Bishopston, in Wiltshire, for his service. A very generous living.”

“What did you say to Earle?”

“That he should investigate Pembroke’s motives before making any decision. I think it was enough to put him on guard.”

“He
should
be on guard,” Laurence said vehemently.

“Beaumont, it’s high time you told Falkland about your trip to London.”

“I know. And now I also know where Radcliff is: at his brother-in-law’s in Newbury.”

“It will be a rude interruption, if you seize him there.”

“I’ll have to draw him out. But I’d rather wait until next week, by which time Falkland should have Hoare safely under arrest.”

“Yes, that’s not a bad idea.” Seward applied the poultice to his hand and bound clean linen over it. “You called out a name when you were dreaming: Juana. Was she your thief?” Laurence nodded. “So you have not yet forgotten her.”

“I have, and I haven’t,” Laurence answered honestly. “It makes me ashamed, that I should be capable of forgetting.”

They had outpaced the Englishman’s servant as they started to cross the Pyrenees, and Laurence felt confident that it would be impossible for him to track them through the dense pine forest. Even they themselves had trouble keeping their bearings.

After some hours they came across a clearing where the ferny undergrowth had been cut to cover a humble shelter built of sticks. Juana jumped down from her horse to poke about inside and emerged flourishing a child’s toy crudely carved out of wood. “The people left their belongings here, Monsieur! Maybe they were chased out.”

They set off once more, and had not gone far when they heard the rushing of a stream ahead, and encountered a path that they followed for about a mile until the sound became clearer. “Look, Monsieur, a
patrin
!” she cried, and dismounted again to pick something from a bush. It was a small bunch of reeds tied together with a cunning knot. “I’m sure they were
Roma
who made that hut. They left the
patrin
as their mark, for other travellers to find.”

They rode on, Laurence ahead. As they were approaching the banks of the stream, his horse whinnied and reared, almost throwing him off. On the ground before him lay what had startled it: the body of a child, swollen and pulsing with maggots. He turned about quickly, to prevent Juana from following. “Some dead animal,” he said, for he did not want to upset her with the truth. “Let’s avoid it, for the sake of the horses.”

They left the path to break through the undergrowth, and reached a point at which the stream broadened into a deep pool, reflecting back the pure blue of the sky. They were both thirsty, and she rushed to kneel and scoop up mouthfuls of water. He was about to drink also when a cloud momentarily obscured the sun, and he could see down into the pool. There were two shapes below, a man and a woman tied together and swaying in the slight current, their bodies trapped by underwater reeds. The woman’s long hair swirled about her head like a plume of seaweed,
the sole thing about either of them that had not become hideous in death.

Juana was about to return her hand for more water when he snatched her away. “That water’s not clean.” And he pointed to the bloated, decomposing bodies. “You should make yourself sick,” he urged. “Stick your finger down your throat.”

But she continued to stare downwards, as if she had not heard him. “They were the people from the camp,” she whispered. “They were murdered by the
gadje
, as was my own family.”

They moved on at once, but after a short interval, as Laurence glanced behind him, he noticed that she was riding so slowly that he had to rein in for her to catch up. The sun gradually began to dip in the sky, and as twilight came, he had no idea where they were. When he looked back for Juana again, she was crumpled over her horse’s neck, her head sagging on her chest as though someone had shot her, both arms about her waist. She allowed him to help her from the saddle and pry them away. Her dress strained where it usually hung loose, her stomach distended as if she were pregnant. Shaken by a dreadful convulsion, she clapped a hand over her mouth, and vomit streamed through her fingers. Choking it up, she fell on the ground, but when he tried to assist her she fought him off, crawling to the side of a tree to drag up her skirts and squat. He retreated and turned aside. Modest as she was about her bodily functions, she would hate him to witness this indignity.

When he came back later, she was lying motionless on the ground. As he picked her up she did not respond, eyes closed, her mouth encrusted with earth and vomit, her breathing laboured. He carried her over to their belongings, made her a bed with what covers they had and wiped the mess from her face. Then she stirred and spoke to him deliriously in her own language; and in Spanish, she muttered, “Don’t mark my grave. It is bad luck. Promise you won’t mark my grave.”

“I promise you won’t die,” he said, though he knew how near she was, and the thought of burying her in the forest appalled him,
as he imagined her body dug up and torn apart by wild creatures.

Listening to her ragged panting and the sounds of the forest, he tried to stay awake for her, to be companion to her last moments, if need be. Yet he must have drowsed, for when he woke the sun was high above the treetops. Juana lay still in his arms, her eyes shut. He cursed out loud, sick with guilt; then his despair lifted as he felt the air from her nostrils, and the cooler temperature of her skin. She was asleep.

After some hours, her eyes opened and she gazed up at him. “You are crying, Monsieur,” she whispered, in a ghost of her normal voice.

It was then that he realised he had come to care for her far too much. She had manipulated him and lied to him; and she had only offered herself to him once, in shame, and out of sheer desperation. If they stayed together, she would just use him again. They must part as soon as she was strong enough to travel on her own.

The next day she seemed much better, but she was in a filthy state. He took her to the riverbank and against her protests washed her thoroughly. She wept and hid her face from him as his hand slipped between her legs, where the worst of the dirt clung; and he was embarrassed also, because in touching her, he had been aroused.

The journey out of the forest exhausted her. On the following day near evening, as they reached the town of Pamplona, he discovered that no amount of money would persuade an innkeeper to admit her. Plague had been spoken of in the countryside, he was informed, and everyone knew that gypsies spread the disease. One sole hope remained: the Sisters of Mercy at the convent might be persuaded to shelter her in their hospice.

When she understood that he was about to leave her there, Juana grabbed on to him with all her strength, shrieking as though possessed. He had to surrender her baggage to the Mother Superior hoping that it would not be inspected, for he had tucked the purse full of gold inside. “How like animals they are, these gypsies,” the Mother Superior commented. “No dignity. Yet God made us all, did He not, and His
purpose is mysterious to the sinful minds of men.” Juana was wrestled off him by a couple of stout nuns and dragged away, screaming his name. And so, he reflected, it was done.

He should have left Pamplona, but he ended up wandering about town until he came to a large hostelry where he took a room and slept late, waking thick in the head as though he had been drunk the night before. At a nearby stewhouse he bought a bath and sat in the steaming water, trying to convince himself that it was all for the best, for Juana as for him; and while he was dressing, a woman proposed to him the usual service. He thought this might afford him some relief, though when they were finished, he felt even gloomier. At a tavern, he tried to get drunk.

Back in his chamber in the early hours of morning, as he lay sprawled on the bed, he was disturbed by a knock at the door. “Monsieur, how could you abandon me to those bitches?” Juana cried, sweeping in. She was clad in a voluminous nun’s robe, and from beneath it, like a conjuror, she produced the purse. “The Mother Superior had hidden it in her cupboard, but I broke the lock and took it out when she was at prayers!”

She tossed it on the bed, bent down to grasp the hem of the habit and stripped it off. More slowly she unfastened the dress below it, and removed that also. In her thin shift, she approached him, took his hands and placed them on her breasts, then ran them over her belly to her groin.

“Juana, what do you want?” he said, as wary of her advances as he had been in Paris. But this time she was bolder, and he was in no mood to resist.

She said nothing, kissing him, her teeth bruising his lips. Then she ripped apart the front of his breeches. He was achingly hard, and when he drew her to him and entered her, she was moist and open.

“Why did you do it?” he asked later, as they lay side by side on the bed.

“You were waiting for me,” she replied evasively. “And I knew you would choose the nicest inn. You still had plenty of money, although I had the gold.” She grabbed a handful of coins from the purse and set them in a neat line from her throat to the rise of her pubic bone. “Am I not handsome, dressed so?” And seizing his hand, she buried it between her legs, at which he gave in to her again, like a man tumbling wilfully over a precipice.

In the weeks that ensued, there was no question of them separating: he did not suggest it, nor did she, and she seemed as eager for him as he was for her. The more he had her, the hungrier for her he became, though she was neither skilled nor adventurous as a lover. He was so intoxicated with her that he scarcely noticed her asking after her tribe in every village they passed. She must have learnt something, for she insisted that they travel yet further southwards, to Granada.

Crossing the river Ebro at Logroño, they headed over the mountains into Castille towards Guadalajara, and then down to the barren plains of La Mancha, where the temperature soared and they gladly shed much of their worn clothing. The heat was a balm to him, and soon they started to resemble each other, burnt to the same dark colour in their faded rags. He had the impression that they were disappearing into the landscape, the hours passing seamlessly from day to night, and day again. He lost track of the month, unable to remember if it was late in May or early June. Then the cold returned, as they made the hard trip over the Sienna Morena, after which, with much relief, they descended into warmer climes, where the sun became powerful once more.