The Brothers Boswell (22 page)

Once they reached the Heriot green, Boswell almost relented. It was early evening in mid-June, and the air was neither too hot nor too cold, full of the scent of the Hospital’s large gardens. It was that last hour before the fading of the day, and the six-o’clock bells could be heard softly tolling from the Gray Friars Church. Everyone and everything seemed to share a lovely indolence.

But he couldn’t abide the possibility that having John along in Moffat would hobble him or force him to play nanny. So he opened
up the box of doctored bowls and handed John the jack. “Throw away, John,” he offered.

John winked at Boswell and then kissed the closed fist holding the jack. And then he gave the tiny target ball a nice, distant toss, the sort favored by better players, those with more control. Boswell saw with a start that John had gained more skill in the last few months than he’d realized.

“You understand, James,” John said, standing back from the canvas, “that if I win, I go to Moffat with you. If you win, I simply don’t go to Moffat with you. I play for something, you play for nothing. Unless denying me is something to you.”

It was a tough argument to refute, without laying out his actual hopes for the six weeks in the country. But Boswell answered, “I play for something too, John. I play for your agreement not to sulk, while I take the advice of my doctors.”

“You’re not old enough to
have
doctors, James. What you have are
father’s
doctors, and even they think you’re odd. So don’t put on airs. You a’nt a laird yet.”

It was strange, having the power to alter the game when he would, and Boswell played the first few throws tentatively. But midway through the first game of the match, almost before he was aware of the pieces falling into place, Boswell found that John had surrounded the jack with a very deftly placed trio of bowls, the last knocking out Boswell’s only counter.

Of course, it was also precisely the sort of configuration the loaded bowls had been designed to rake through, and Boswell did just that, chucking two of John’s bowls out of play, even blasting one all the way to the facing ditch. It was as though the world had been upended.

They played the remaining game with John in an increasing funk. As his mood deteriorated, so did his accuracy. When they’d finished, John cursed and kicked the canvas. And then he turned to give Boswell an utterly hopeless look, the look that younger
brothers give when the conspiracy against them is revealed to be more far-reaching even than they’d imagined.

They walked home along the Cowgate in silence, passing the very novelty store itself. This last was too much for Boswell, and he tried to salve his conscience by buying the two of them fruit-filled Bath buns, a new treat in town and one of his brother’s current favorites. But John wouldn’t have it. He pitched the thick bun at the gutter and trudged on in silence.

Two mornings later, as the chaise containing Boswell and his tutor rolled away from Parliament Square for Moffat, neither Boswell’s father nor John was there to see him off. Only his mother and his youngest brother David waved good-bye, and Boswell couldn’t help but wonder if a man had to continue throughout his life to cast family members away like ballast, in order to keep his own new self above the waves.

B
OSWELL FINDS THAT
, without thinking, he has removed the little watch fob from his coat pocket and opened it up to reveal the bit of cloth with the dark dab that might or might not be Stuart blood, might or might not be the juice of a roast beef. When he was sixteen, Boswell had paid half a crown for the fragment, and he has since alternated between considering himself gullible and blessed.

He is stroking it absently when he feels the sedan slow and dive abruptly toward the ground. In another second, the top of the chair is lifted off, and with it goes the pensive mood. Night sky and cold air flood the chair, and he almost laughs out loud at the shock, the excitement.

Boswell steps down just at the mouth of the Strand, fifteen feet from the central stone arch of Northumberland House. As always, he is infused with a childlike awe, and he feels an impulse to bow, even to kneel. But he contents himself with an actual tip of his hat to the Percy lion perched high up on the long Gothic front of Northumberland House.

Before he’s reached the street entrance, a servant in elegant livery steps out of the shadows and bows. “Mr. Boswell? You are expected, sir. Please do follow me.”

An upstart would have his servants challenge each guest and demand a name
, Boswell gloats to himself as he falls into step a touch behind the man,
but the servant of a Percy would simply
know.

Boswell is led by turns through the inner courtyard, then into the vast vestibule of the house itself. Broad marble staircases curl gently up and away to either side, leading to the apartments themselves, but these the servant ignores and steers Boswell down a newer wing, to the Lady Northumberland’s picture gallery.

If the truth were known, Boswell has surreptitiously paced off the picture gallery—at the tail end of his first visit, with the footman gone to fetch his hat and coat—and he knows it to be well over a hundred feet long. He measured it because he is in love with the Northumberland picture gallery, and has been for weeks now.

The infatuation is based only in part on the impressive amount of gilt covering the cornice and frieze, the columns framing the tall windows. More to the point is the room’s stunning narrative assault: paintings are angled and positioned to catch the eye no matter where in the room one turns. Wall-sized panoramas; historical allegories; Douglas and Percy family groupings, down to and including favored Douglas and Percy pets. But finally Boswell is in love with the picture gallery because every time he enters it, it is packed to the gilded roof with Londoners more powerful nearly than he can imagine. And in his short experience of it, Boswell’s luck is good in this room.

Tonight is no exception. Lady Northumberland glances up from her tea table and then actually rises to come and meet him, trailing satin and lace, leaving behind an assortment of well-heeled guests, including an earl and a slight, pasty man Boswell recognizes as a director of the East India Company.

As the countess makes her way across the room to him, Boswell forces himself to see her realistically, rather than as his patroness, rather than as the living representative of the ancient House of Percy.

The reality is this: the countess is a medium-stout married
woman of forty-six who manages to look fifty-six, with a weak chin, pudgy fingers, and kind hangdog eyes.

But her wardrobe inevitably makes up for her own lack of physical presence. The gown tonight is a masterpiece of conspicuous consumption, and Boswell appreciates it fully: cream-white satin padded with ornamented robings at her sides and thick showy satin flounces at her feet. This display is offset by a dainty cap of French lace, the hair beneath piled and only lightly powdered.

Her heavy face too has been whitened—even Boswell can see this—and her cheeks and lips expertly reddened. The powder on her face is so fine and so carefully applied that he can find the wrinkles there only by searching them out, like footpaths beneath a fall of new snow.

While she is not attractive in any conventional sense, Boswell always feels a powerful unfocused emotional rush in Lady Northumberland’s presence. It is as though his mind and body have no established categories for exceptionally powerful older women and can only respond with the closest approximations: deep filial deference, alternating with a confused excitement nearly indistinguishable from sexual desire.

“Mr. Boswell,” the countess says, extending her arm to him, rather than just her hand, “you favor us again. I am glad, truly. This is now three Friday evenings in a row! More than we had a right to hope from a young man upon the Town.”

“I told you once, madam, that I should run about this house just like a tame spaniel.” Boswell bows over the soft white thickish fingers. “It is not in the heart of a spaniel to miss a party, and a fire in the grate.”

“Of course it is not. But you are no spaniel, sir, by my reckoning.”

“A terrier, then, if her Ladyship pleases.”

He sees the unrestrained amusement come into her face, one of the things she seems openly to relish about his company. “Nay, a noble greyhound, if you will insist on canine distinctions. How do
your family, then, sir? All are well at home, I hope? Your father and mother and younger brothers?”

“All are very well indeed, madam.”

“And your father’s new house at the family estate goes forward?”

“It is nearly finished, from what I understand. My father has apparently ordered his books carried into the library.”

As he says this, Lady Northumberland’s tired eyes glance about the room, but they then come back to rest on Boswell. She has clearly missed his reply, but smiles good-naturedly in any event. “Well, if he is fitting up the library, that is to say a great deal. Your father would never trust the volumes there if the place were less than complete. He is a man who dotes on a book. That is fine, then, fine, fine. Even the old families such as ours, Mr. Boswell,” she says, patting his arm, “must renew their settings occasionally.”

This flattering comparison of their two families—combined with the thrumming consciousness that others in the room are now glancing their way—strikes Boswell nearly speechless with pride. Later tonight he will set these words down verbatim in his journal, and he silently repeats them twice, fixing them like night moths to the velvet board of his mind.

But there is no time for a suitably modest reply, because Lady Northumberland suddenly takes a half-step closer, and her voice drops an octave. He can smell her perfume, a honeyed fragrance like hyacinth.

“You will note,” she tells him softly, “that the Duke of Queensberry is standing just now at the fire. As luck would have it, he was the first to arrive this evening, and I have already put him in mind of your commission. I have not been idle, sir.”

Boswell takes in the duke with a controlled cock of his head, and lowers his own voice an octave. “I spoke with the duke at breakfast several weeks back. He was difficult to read, I thought. But he promised to speak with Lord Ligonier, who is Commander-in-Chief, as your Ladyship knows.”

Lady Northumberland raises her eyes to Boswell’s and then runs
her glance over his face, his eyebrows, his ears, his lips. He watches her eyes parse his countenance. It is just this sort of on-again, off-again attention that continues Boswell in his confused and tentative gallantry.

But apparently she has only been searching his face for signs of naïveté. Her voice is amused: “This is just his way, to represent the thing as Lord Ligonier’s to give. Should he choose to accommodate you—and me—it will seem that he has done something extraordinary. Should he choose to shift you, then it is but a cruel whim of Ligonier’s. But you may trust that my Lord Queensberry has it in his power to do the thing tonight, if he would.”

“Has he, indeed.”

“Oh, this
instant
, sir, if he would.” She pats Boswell’s arm twice, raises her weak chin to search his face again, the same blunt yet idle inventory, this time taking in the cut of his new jacket as well, the showy knot at his throat. “You keep the Guards firmly fixed in your sight, whatever may be said by way of appearance in getting to it.”

Boswell cannot help but bow, this time not out of ceremony but because he feels that he genuinely
wants
to bow to her. And when he lifts his head and speaks, the feelings of gratitude and reverence make the common courtesies audibly resonant, in a way that brings her attention fully to him for a last few moments. “I am your Ladyship’s most obedient servant. You are good to me. Indeed, I set a higher value on the countenance you show me than anybody else could do, truly.”

Lady Northumberland shies a hand at him, but she is pleased.

“I know that you and my father are friends of long standing, and that many favors have passed between you over the years. And I am honored to be a part of that friendly economy, madam.” Boswell straightens his back and gives her a coy look. “But I am also vain enough to hope that some one particle of your favor may be directed at the son in his own right.”

Boswell sees dimples appear in her heavy cheeks, and he is charmed by them. Lady Northumberland searches the top of her
head tentatively with her hands, checking the seat of her lace cap before answering. “More than one particle, sir,” she assures him, “more than one. Of that you may be certain.”

Boswell nods. And then, more or less because he cannot resist, he follows up: “Perhaps more than two, madam?”

Yet by the time Boswell works his way through the small crowd to the fireplace, the signal has gone out for cards, and the invited have begun several distinct waves of movement toward the real amusement of the evening. Servants are steering guests to tables arranged in a loose semicircle about the fire—deeper players facing deeper players, novices deftly herded together—and breaking seals on decks.

The room takes on a new electricity: the mere scent of money has become the actual prospect of money.

There is a moment during which Boswell sees his way to a vacant seat at Queensberry’s table, but he hesitates: he is under a strict promise to his friend Thomas Sheridan—who relieved him of a gambling debt in Edinburgh, to the tune of five guineas—not to gamble for as many years. Four years of the promise remain, and Boswell supposes he means to keep it. It is not the vow, exactly, that holds Boswell true to his word. Rather, he is too superstitious to sit down beside the duke, for he has the distinct sense that breaking his vow to Sheridan will knock whatever luck he has tonight straight into a cocked hat.