The Speckled Monster (66 page)

Behind her, the doors to her chamber suddenly flew open and two footmen stepped inside. Footmen in new and entirely extravagant gold lace. A man's heels clicked on the floor. Her daughter had fallen silent.

“Mr. W—” cried Lady Mary in annoyance, half rising as she turned.

But it was not Mr. Wortley.

Her sleeve swept a jar from the table, splattering glass and white cosmetic paste across the floor in a long dash of surprise. An odd little squeak came from her throat, and she sank to her knees, filled with the old terror.

“Forgive me, Father. I did not expect you.”

“Of course you did not,” said the duke of Kingston irritably, stalking up to her to proffer his hand to be kissed. “How would you? I never find myself accidentally in this quaint corner of town, and you never invite me.”

It was true she did not ask him often. But she most certainly did ask him. He always regretted, however, without any apparent regret.

His hand withdrew, but he remained in front of her, talking to the top of her head. “Servants in a deplorable state of disarray. One insolent fellow actually tried to stop me from entering. Ought to dismiss him. . . . But I am not here to discuss the state of your household.”

He walked to the windows, skirting the mess on the floor, and Lady Mary realized that her daughter had disappeared. While her father's back was turned, she raised her head and looked surreptitiously about. There she was—eyes big as saucers, gleaming beneath the dark scrolls of a japanned card table. Mary gave her a quick smile and put her finger to her lips. But then her father stirred, and she dropped her hand and looked back down.

He did not turn, however, just stood at a window watching the world scurry by, squawking and singing in the market square below. “I daresay,” he mused, “I would never have allowed you to traipse over to Turkey. So I suppose old Wortley must come in for at least that much thanks.”

He cleared his throat and turned. “In the matter of inoculation, I mean. I could have wished you had brought home your discovery in time for poor Will. However, it is at least in time for his children.” He crossed back to stand before her.

Still staring at the floor, Lady Mary held her breath. Her father did not hold conversations with his children; he delivered proclamations. This, though, looked to become the longest speech he had ever deigned to grace her with. And the closest thing to a compliment too.

He went on. “Sir Hans says he fears that the smallpox may be as strong as ever this year. So I have engaged Mr. Maitland to inoculate Lord Dorchester.” In spite of herself, Lady Mary glanced up. Her father's namesake—Will's son—young Evelyn, Lord Dorchester, was all that stood between her father and the extinction of the dukedom his family had schemed for a century to acquire.

For the first time in her life, he allowed her to hold his gaze. “And the duchess,” he continued, “insists that Lady Caroline must join him. . . . Their younger sisters we shall see about later. Might I ask the favor of your presence?”

“I should be honored, Father.”

He reached out and laid his hand on her head in blessing. “You have done well, my Mary. Rather more notoriety than necessary, perhaps, but I like your spirit. I may even say I am proud to claim it as mine. God knows neither of your sisters got it.” He whirled on one heel and strode quickly out the door, his two footmen—for they were his, of course, she ought to have recognized them—falling into step behind him.

“Mamma,” whispered little Mary, creeping out from under the table and looking carefully about the room. Seeing they were alone, she skidded across the floor and flung herself into Lady Mary's arms. “Mamma, was that really the duke of Kingston?”

Tears sliding down her cheeks, Lady Mary stroked her daughter's hair; it still amazed her that Mary was now seven. “Yes, darling. That was my father. Your grandfather.” She watched her daughter consider this information. Like a little wren, really.

“He is very grand for such a tiny old man,” she said at last.

Lady Mary began to laugh.
A tiny old man! She had not seen that at all
. She kissed the top of her daughter's head. “Yes, my little Moll. He is very grand.”

 

Just after the end of his first month in London, Zabdiel sat down to write his first report home to the Reverend Mr. Benjamin Colman. He had dined several times with the governor, as well as with Mr. Dummer and Mr. Cooke, but alas, what he had to report was not pretty.
I am at a loss what to say about our governor,
he began.

Governor Shute was peacocking about, full of pride and resentment, as if his government would be reconfirmed on whatever terms he chose; Mr. Cooke, quite possibly equally well informed, hinted exactly the reverse. At times, thought Zabdiel, all of London seemed to run on innuendo.

 

On February 27, Lady Mary attended the inoculations of her thirteen-year-old nephew and nine-year-old half-sister at her father's house in Arlington Street, while the two silly mothers shrieked and shook as if they were already in mourning. The younger girls, of course, caught the hysteria, which brought her father roaring out of his library, at which point the entire household dissolved into chaos.

After promising to return every morning, she went home with a headache.

And so it began again, even as the smallpox reared its speckled head once more. Her friends, her acquaintances, people who had seen her once across the room at court, desperately pleaded for her presence while their children were being inoculated; they wanted young Mary as well, as if she might be some kind of good-luck charm.

Just as desperately, the same people shunned her when she had been attending the inoculations of other children.

 

On April 2, Zabdiel arrived at Leicester House half expecting to be turned ignominiously from the door. Instead, he found himself ushered into the hushed fastnesses of the unofficial but princely palace, on the occasion of the inoculation of Her Royal Highness Princess Mary, age three.

At a grand set of double doors, his name was announced as he was thrust into a surprisingly crowded reception room, its formal walls and ceiling larded with gilt, carved plaster swags, and cherubs who looked to be diving down on one's head with no good intent. Sir Hans appeared at his elbow, steering him into a slightly smaller inner room, warmly paneled and painted, where he presented Dr. Boylston of New England to the Prince and Princess of Wales.

“Your Royal Highness,” said Zabdiel to the prince with a bow.

“Capital,” said the prince, turning away to roam the room in impatient circles.

“Your Royal Highness,” said Zabdiel to the princess, bowing again and kissing her hand.

“Enchantée,”
she replied. “Your presence is most valuable, Doctor. You must tell me of your battle against this beast presently, but just at the moment, I have a question for Sir Hans.”

The princess led Sir Hans away for a tête-à-tête. Why the princess imagined she needed to summon him all the way from America, Zabdiel could not fathom; the room was thick with several more surgeons and at least a half-dozen bona fide physicians of the Royal College. On the other hand, he need not fear calling attention to himself by breaking some arcane rule of etiquette; in this press, he could hardly be noticed. He recognized Sergeant Amyand and Mr. Maitland, inspecting the instruments. Mr. Lilly, the apothecary. Sir Hans, of course, along with Dr. Steigerthal, Dr. Mead, Dr. Arbuthnot, and several others with the patronizing air of London physicians, though he did not know them by name.

By a window, a small boy—four or five, Zabdiel guessed—knelt on the floor, absorbed in lining up small carved infantry and cavalry troops just so according to a battle plan in a large book spread out beside him. He wore a sumptuous military uniform in scarlet and gold, but his unsoldierly tongue was set firmly in the corner of his mouth as he moved from book to floor, placing his figures.

Prince William, thought Zabdiel.

“What battle are you fighting?” he asked, sinking to his knees beside the boy.

“Marlborough at Blenheim.” The boy's voice was high and clear.

“Very likely to win . . . that is, if you fight on the British side.”

“I always take the British side,” the boy bristled. “At least, always when there is a British side. I would like to do Alexander the Great at Gaugamela, but no one has found me a battle plan. But if they do—
when
they do, then I won't be British.”

“Because you will be William the Great?”

The boy looked up, suspicious of being laughed at. “Not yet,” he said haughtily. “You can be born a prince, says my grandpapa, but you must earn a ‘great.' But I will be a general, and then I will conquer France. Already I have a cavalry regiment. Do you like to ride?”

“Always,” said Zabdiel gravely. “I would much rather be riding than sitting here just now.”

“Ha!” said the Prince of Wales over his shoulder. “The last honest man in London. . . . So you like the riding, my American doctor?”

Groaning inwardly, Zabdiel turned and stood. “Yes, Your Highness. So much so that I have brought my own horses with me from America.”

“American horses, eh?” said Prince George, thwacking his crop against his riding boot. He narrowed his eyes. “Do they make good hunters?”

“Yes, sir,” said Zabdiel. “Though the hunting they know is surely different from the customs here. I learned to hunt alone in the woods, you see, from my father and an old Indian servant.”

“A Red Indian?” squeaked Prince William, his jaw dropping.

“Your stature, Doctor, soars with the eagles,” said Prince George dryly. “I do not care one way or the other about Indians, but I would like to see these American horses of yours. Horses, you know, seem to be running in from the most unexpected places these days.” His eyes scanned the room. “See that one?” he cried, brandishing his crop in the direction of a woman across the way. “In green and gold, by the door?” Zabdiel winced at this boorishness, but the prince prattled on, oblivious. “Must have you speak to her. Knows Turkish horses. Quite small, you know, but with the stamina of elephants. The horses, I mean, not the lady.”

She had dark, glossy hair smoothed into a roll at the nape of her neck. As if their eyes burned her, she turned and lifted one dark slash of a brow with displeasure.

Zabdiel colored and looked away.

“Pity, ain't it?” said the prince. “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.”

Zabdiel glanced back. She had returned to her conversation, with Doctors Mead and Arbuthnot; it seemed to be lively. He saw nothing to pity. To his eyes, she was startlingly beautiful.

“Used to be quite lovely,” rumbled the prince. “Fancied her myself, you know. Before the smallpox roughed her up. Come to think of it, horses weren't all she brought back from Turkey were they? The two of you will have more to speak about than bloodlines. . . . Lines of blood, so to speak.” He stomped the floor with delight at his cleverness, and a toy soldier disappeared beneath his boot with a brittle crunch.

A wail of dismay rose from Prince William.

“You, sir,” barked the Prince of Wales. “Cease that caterwauling. Remove this clutter from my floor and go make yourself useful to your mother directly.” Glaring at his son, he kicked the whole battle aside and walked on.

Prince William looked after his father with hatred in his eyes, but his lower lip trembled.

“If it would suit Your Highness to command me,” said Zabdiel, “I will shift your battle to that table over there by the next window, while you do as your father wishes.”

The boy flashed him a smile, and then withdrew it in pride. “You shall be a field marshal,” he said. “I command to you to reorder my field.” He strutted away, already a small parody of his father.

 

“As the prince has so clearly pointed me out to you, I will take the liberty of assuming that we have been royally introduced,” said a light, acid voice behind Zabdiel, just as he was finishing.

“My lady,” he said, rising and bowing.

“We are supposed to hurl ourselves at each other in animated conversation about horses, I believe,” said Lady Mary.

“We could talk about Marlborough at Blenheim, if you'd rather,” said Zabdiel. “Just at present, I am up on it.”

A smile glimmered at the edge of her expression. “I hear you possess a marvelous stallion named Prince,” she said.

He bowed again. “To my eyes, my lady, he is without fault.”

“Then he is surely far superior to princes of the two-legged variety,” observed Lady Mary.

They took a turn about the room, but it was not about either horses or battles that they spoke. By the time they closed their first circle, they were both laughing.

Not long afterward, Princess Mary arrived, and the operation was performed quickly and well, so far as Zabdiel could see through the gathered crowd.