Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (64 page)

PART II

Endings

ENGLAND

1720 –1721

Chapter Twenty

Bab," a voice called her softly, pulling her up from sleep's dark nothing, "wake up."

   She ignored the hand on her bare shoulder, clinging to the dark in her mind, but it shook her again, insistent. As insistent as the throbbing bright sunlight coming in through the open windows. Closing her eyes more tightly, she snuggled into the rumpled sheet, still cool from the early morning damp. Then someone kissed her shoulder.

   "Darling," a soft, shy, young voice said. "I must go. At least wake to tell me good–bye. Please, Bab…"

   Thoughts went skittering into one another inside her head. Dark. Shrill. Like a summer night's bats disturbed in their cave. Sweet Jesus, she thought, her face pressed into the pillow, this is a nightmare. Wake me when it is finished.

   "I am meeting Wart at Garraway's. South Sea is making another stock offer to annuity holders, and I must convert mine before it is too late," the voice said. "Otherwise I would not leave you like this. But I told John to serve you tea. Wake up…love." The last word was hesitantly, shyly, said.

   It was enough to make her turn over and open one eye to see Jemmy Landsdowne (seventeen and no nightmare) sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her with eyes that adored her. Oh, dear, sweet, merciful God, she thought, turning her face away as he leaned forward to kiss her lips. Quickly, she shut her eyes. He contented himself with touching a strand of her long, tousled, red–gold hair instead.

   She listened to the sounds he made as he left the room, the rustle of fabric as he pulled on his coat, the sound of his heels tapping across the floor, the merry off–key tune he was whistling as the door closed. Nausea gripped her by the throat. It was last night's drinking, but it was this also. The door reopened, and she did not move. She played being asleep, while the nausea choked her, and thoughts circled in her head, a head that pounded, that felt as if it were being tightened in a vise. She heard the sounds of china rattling against a tray, the dull clink of silver. What have I done? she thought. This is not happening. The door closed.

   She sat up and slowly shook out her hair. It billowed out around her like a lion's mane. Wrapping a sheet around her naked body, she got up from the bed and poured herself a cup of tea. Her hands were shaking so badly that she spilled some, but the hot liquid burned her tongue and throat and some of the bile in her stomach. She went to the open window and leaned out. The hot, still air of London's August fell on her like a blanket. She could smell the stench from the Thames River, matching what lay on top of her stomach. A cart rolled slowly by, the barrels on its back pierced with holes that sprinkled water on the street to keep the dust down. Across, on the front steps of a house, his basket of tools and fresh rushes at his feet, a chair mender stood mending the broken rushes of a chair while the housewife watched him from her front window. The shrill cries of street vendors on the main street just around the corner could be heard: "New river water!" "Ripe strawberries!" "Knives, combs, or ink horns!" "Crab, crab, any crab!" Somewhere, a man and woman were quarreling. Barbara wedged herself in the open window, like a gypsy or lazy maidservant and sat there, watching the chair mender and sipping tea.

   Have I bedded Jemmy Landsdowne? she thought very slowly, for thinking hurt her head. Asking that question made the nausea rise in her throat. Never run away from the truth…that was her grandmother's voice in her mind. Bits and pieces of the countless homilies, lectures, and sermons she had listened to as a girl always drifted in and out of her mind at random to remind her that she was not living up to her grandmother's standard of a gentlewoman. She needed no sermon…her everyday life these days was reminder enough.

   Never run away from the truth because you carry it on your shoulder and someday it will put its ugly face into yours and say, "Boo." A lecture pulled out and recited by her grandmother whenever she and Harry had lied about their latest mischief. They both used to jump back—even though they knew what was coming—at Grandmama leaning forward, her fingers curling on each side of her face like a witch's, to cry, "Boo!" in a loud voice. But facing the truth of stealing from the Tamworth kitchen or Sir John's orchard was a far cry from facing the truth of waking up in the bed of a boy she had no feelings for. (A fondness…there was that…the resemblance to Kit…but fondness could not justify…Boo…Thank you, Grandmama, I can say boo for myself.)

   How can this have happened? she thought, leaning back against the window frame. Suddenly, she wished with all her heart that she could be fifteen again, with the vigor and sureness she had felt then. The sense of knowing exactly what she wanted; the sense of knowing exactly what was right and what was wrong. Now she was twenty and she knew nothing. Except that she was sitting in a window, under Jemmy's sheet naked as a Covent Garden whore, and in similar circumstances. And I know this, she thought, and the thought rang sharp and clear like a bell in the morning in her mind. I know I do not like what has just happened. What has been happening to me all this spring and summer. I know, I am afraid. Do you hear me, Grandmama? Does anyone hear me? I am afraid. But her grandmother did not answer. How could she? One did not answer what was never asked. Ugly little truths jumped down from her shoulder and went leaping like demons before her eyes. Boo, she told them. Boo.

   Wearily, she concentrated on remembering what she could of the night before. She had left Richmond Lodge in the early afternoon with Charles. At the thought of Charles, she stiffened. A new and dangerous element was introduced into her predicament. Did he know? Well, he must not know for all their sakes. Go on, she told herself, trying to get past Charles. Face the rest. Everyone was crammed into carriages: Charles, Harry, Pamela, Wart, Judith, drinking from silver flasks and laughing—except herself. She had not wanted to go. She was in one of her moods, as they were known… those dark times in her life, coming lately again with increasing frequency (she had thought them left in France), times when she felt she had lost her place in the world, when living from day to day was not enough. But how did she explain such feelings to people who never felt so? There was no explaining.

   And she and Charles had begun to quarrel, and naturally they had stopped at taverns along the way to London (she could just picture the others piling out of the carriage like pumpkins spilling from a cart, so glad were they to be away from the quarreling). There was the memory of smoky rooms, ale foaming, Pamela's whiny, high–pitched voice, Judith's inane laughter, Harry losing a quick game of cards, her headache. Her boredom. Her distaste. Everyone was laughing and talking and having a good time. Only she sat apart. And so she began to drink, to be like them, to feel a part of their fun, glass after glass, until at last everything was soft, a golden blur, and she could laugh and joke as they were doing. Where Jemmy came in she had no idea. Only that somewhere, in some tavern, he was there, with his own group of friends. All younger than she by three or four years, and one of the young men began to flatter her—as did any young man who considered himself fashionable these days, for she was "Fair Aurora, the dawn's sweet, young queen."

   If she tried, she could still hear the echo of Wart and Harry baying like hyenas when they had read the stanzas to each other, stanzas from Caesar White's last book of poetry, which had made her famous even before she put the toe of one of her satin shoes on English soil…the poetry…and Richelieu. She closed her eyes at the thought of Richelieu; the corner of her mouth trembled slightly. "You still love him," he had said, his face so different from that first time when he had whispered, "I have waited such a long time…touch me, Barbara…touch me." But she had been too numb, too crazed inside to appreciate his skill. Revenge had been on her mind, only revenge. She shook her head to chase away thoughts that would only bring tears and took a sip of her cold tea. There was no use in crying. She had not cried since those terrible weeks after she had seen the truth of Roger and Philippe, weeks in which she had thought she would go mad, weeks in which she had screamed and wept and been for all the world the same as one of those wretched women chained in Bedlam Hospital.

   She put one hand to her face at the thought of that time and its aftermath, seared in her mind, as seared as the moment she had seen Roger kiss Philippe, for the aftermath was Roger walking away from her as if she were nothing. Walking out of her life. That was the moment she stopped crying. The hurt was too deep for tears. It went to her core, her essence, her being. All that had existed was loss—choking her with darkness, the way water does a drowning man. She had thought she would die. (What a child she had been to think a broken heart would kill her, but it had felt so; yes, at the time, it had felt so.) She had not died. Nor had she cried again. Not even when she and Harry journeyed to Italy to bury their father. We bring nothing into this world, the curate had chanted (the wooden coffin was slowly being lowered down, down, down into dust and nothingness, and no one was there to mourn, save the curate…and her…and Harry…and she knew what nothingness was because that was all that was in her heart), and it is certain we can carry nothing out. ("I will bring him home," Harry told her, his face a shadow against the dark sky. "I swear I will bring him home." He did not. She arranged it herself, Roger paying for it, as he paid for all things. A sack of gold arrived for her each month, wherever she might be, and there was always a banker she could call upon for extra funds. The first time the gold had arrived, she had the clear memory of flinging it against a wall in such a fit of rage that the sack burst and gold coins went skittering everywhere. She could still picture Harry and Wart on their hands and knees hunting for coins. Two years later, she was staring at a newly arrived sack and wondering if Roger had touched it, if the mark of his hands might still be upon it, and she could not keep herself from touching it also, as if her act would lessen some of the distance separating them. Touching it gently, delicately, as if some of his warmth might have crossed the miles from England to France to make her well again.) The Lord gave, the curate had chanted, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

   She watched a scrawny street cat leap suddenly into the shadow of a house and emerge triumphantly with a struggling rat in its mouth. The chair mender, his task finished, was packing his tools into his basket. "Old satin, old taffeta, old velvet!" came clearly to her ears from somewhere near. It had been a long time since she had thought of her father's death, There were no tears then, and there were no tears now. But they were in her heart. She could feel them. Like many small stones. Thoughts tumbled over each other in her mind: her father, the grave, the wind that day roaring and howling around her, sucking at her, pulling at her, Richelieu rising from his chair that first time and saying in his caressing voice, ah, the birthday girl at last, Charles and Jemmy snarling over her in that tavern last night like dogs over a choice bone. Charles was drunk, drunker than anyone except Harry, and more lethal….Harry's edge was gone, spilled from his body in Paris, side by side with his blood. But Charles still possessed a dangerous edge that had at first intrigued her and now left her weary. If all things left her weary, and she was only twenty, what would her life be at thirty?

   "Mistress! Mistress!"

   She looked down. The chair mender was smiling up at her, gap– toothed, waving something in his hand.

   "How much, mistress?"

   The sunlight caught what was in his hand. A coin. Probably the coin he had just earned. Laughter suddenly filled her, like bubbles rising in a glass. She smiled down at him.

   "Not today. Another time, perhaps."

   He sighed, winked, then pocketed his coin. She watched him walk away, his basket strapped to his back. Harry would have appreciated this moment. Or Richelieu. But not Charles. The laughter inside her evaporated.

   Charles had thrown a glass of punch in someone's face last night for less. She could remember shouts and Pamela's screams, chairs turned over and Charles and one of Jemmy's friends rolling on the floor, amid the sand and stale tobacco and spilled ale. And laughing, she remembered laughing like a madwoman, and Jemmy (dear Jemmy, who flattered her with his boyish admiration, who reminded her of her brother, Kit, whom she was fond of…no more…nothing more) took her outside and began to kiss her. She remembered saying no. Yes, she could remember that. And then she was in a carriage, and everything was reeling into darkness around her, and Jemmy was trying to kiss her again, and she was confused because she was thinking of Roger, dying to remember how his mouth had felt on hers…. "My dear Barbara," Richelieu had told her, his mouth twisting ironically, "I cannot fight a ghost. Nor do I intend to."

   She shivered so violently that the teacup perched on the window ledge fell to the floor. She stared at the little pool of tea, the tea leaves, the bits of broken cup on Jemmy's floor. Annie believed in the tea leaves. What did these say about the future…and did she wish to know? As she stood up, everything in her stomach, which had seemed soothed by the tea, rose up in her throat. Stumbling, she ran to the chamber pot and retched. Her mouth tasted vile; she was wracked by the spasms of her body; her head felt as if it would explode. If only they could see me now, she thought, wiping her mouth. Aunt Abigail, the Frog, all those people who believe I am so fashionable…and so wicked. She would have laughed, except that she felt too wretched. Sick and wretched.

   Once she could stand again, she began to put on her clothes. The mirror above an old Dutch chest reflected her motions, the jerky movements of her hands. Taking a last look around the room to be certain she had left nothing, as if leaving nothing might erase the fact that she had been there—what a fool I am, she thought—she caught sight of her image in the mirror. A woman with magnificent hair pinned carelessly into place stared back at her. A woman in that first, true flush of young beauty, with a heart–shaped face and large blue eyes with a strained expression in them. A woman unfashionably slim when all the world celebrated full, fleshy white arms and breasts and thighs, and she could offer only a certain beguiling slenderness that turned to gauntness at the first zigzag of her emotions. But there was always her smile and her voice. I do not know why I desire you, Charles had whispered that first time into her ear, as she lay under him. But I do, he said, biting her white neck. I do. You taste as sweet as honey.