Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (96 page)

   Diana seemed to swell in her clothes. "Where is she?"

   "In the room just down that corridor, ma'am. May I announce you?"

   Diana pushed past him. "I will announce myself."

   The door slammed open with such force that it bounced back from the wall, but Diana caught it with one gloved hand. She stared at Barbara, obviously dressed for travel, who was looking at her with a face that held surprise and chagrin and the beginnings of anger. But Diana was past anger. Thérèse, playing solitaire, sat looking at Diana with her hand suspended in midair, and Hyacinthe, sitting beside her, said, "Oh, no."

   "Oh, yes," said Diana, closing the door behind her. The dogs, at Hyacinthe's feet, jumped into his lap at the sound of her voice. It was cold and determined and clearly furious. She walked slowly into the middle of the room. No one moved.

   "I hear that you are going on a journey." Her voice was like the lash of a whip. Barbara had a sudden memory of the same tone in her mother's voice when she had talked to Harry about Jane, so many years ago. Well, I am not Harry, she thought, and she met her mother's eyes. Thérèse made a sound, but there was a knock on the door and the tavernkeeper put his head in.

   "A message from the
Brinton
. The captain says come. They sail this afternoon—"

   "Get out!" Diana shrieked, and the tavernkeeper pulled his head back like a turtle darting back into his shell and shut the door. Hyacinthe's lower lip began to quiver, and the dogs trembled under his hands.

   "Thérèse," Barbara said calmly, "take Hyacinthe and the dogs and wait in the carriage."

   "You are not going to leave," Diana said, walking toward Barbara. "I am not going to allow it."

   "How will you stop me?"

   Diana hesitated at the simplicity of her question. Barbara stood up and stepped around her and began to walk toward the door. Diana grabbed her arm, hard, and Barbara pulled away just as hard, turning quickly, her skirts swirling.

   "Fight me," she said. "Because that is what you will have to do to stop me."

   Diana was frozen, staring at her. Barbara's hand touched the door handle. Diana ran forward, words tumbling from her mouth.

   "You must listen to me. Stop and listen! You are doing a mad thing. You could die in a shipwreck—"

   "Or in an overturned carriage, or from smallpox, or I could cut my throat with a razor."

   She opened the door. Diana grabbed her arm again.

   "You can stay at Tamworth. Forever. I will not interfere in your life. Ever. I swear it. Do not leave. It is the grief. You were besotted about Roger, out of all proportion. It has made you temporarily mad. Wait, Barbara, I beg you. If you still want to go in six months, I will help you. I swear it."

   Barbara pulled her arm away. "Good–bye, Mother." She began to walk across the public room of the tavern.

   "No!" Diana screamed, running after her, to the interest of those drinking ale in the public room, who had heard most of the quarrel, at least Diana's part.

   "No! No! No! Barbara, wait! I beg you."

   But Barbara was outside. Diana stood at the entrance to the tavern, and she began to sob. "I cannot believe this," she said, over and over. Barbara walked back to her from the carriage. Thérèse and Hyacinthe hung out the window, their faces taut. And Perryman, atop the carriage, pulled his hat down so that Diana should not recognize him.

   "Thank God," Diana said, trying to stop crying, trying to wipe her face, which was a mixture of tears and lead and powder and rouge running down her cheeks and onto her gown.

   "A good–bye kiss," Barbara said.

   "No," Diana whispered, but Barbara leaned forward and kissed her as Diana grabbed her and held her.

   "Do not leave me," Diana begged. "You are all I have! Do not—" But, once more, Barbara pulled away, walked back to the carriage and climbed inside.

   "No!" Diana screamed, stamping her feet, the veins standing out in her neck, several of the tavern customers spilling their ale at the loudness and ferocity of her scream. The carriage lurched away. Diana bent over with sobs, and the tavernkeeper helped her to a chair.

   "My daughter," she wept into a napkin. She could not stop crying. "Fool!" she screamed, slamming her fist into the table. People were paying now, leaving as fast as they could. She broke into fresh sobs. "She is a fool!" she screamed to the room at large. "I do not even know where Virginia is."

* * *

   Aboard the ship, they made their way to the small quarterdeck reserved for the ship's passengers and for the livestock. Above them, the first mate was shouting orders as the captain stood by the great wheel, his arms folded. The cow, tied down, lowed at the sight of them, and Thérèse petted her nose. Hyacinthe stared at the sailors, his eyes shining, as they climbed the masts and rigging in their bare feet, as nimble as if they were climbing stairs. He ran over to the side and pointed down, and Barbara joined him. Small boats on each side of the ship, connected to it with great lengths of thick rope, were preparing to row the ship out into the river's tide. Other passengers, two men and a woman, sat on crates and talked amongst themselves. The ship began to move, almost imperceptibly, as the men in the small boats bent and heaved, their arms moving back and forth in time with the oars. On the shore, Perryman waved his hat, and they waved back to him. They moved out into the river, and as if by magic, at a shout from the first mate, the sails came rumbling down, with creaks and groans and loud hisses, as the sailors scurried to tie them down, and then suddenly they filled with wind, and the ship gave a great heave as it caught in the tide, and Barbara staggered and fell back against the cow, who lowed again, and Thérèse laughed, and Hyacinthe grabbed the basket which held the dogs and said, "We are at sea!"

   "We are at river," Thérèse corrected. Then she crossed herself.

   "Harry would have loved this," Barbara said, her eyes shining as bright as Hyacinthe's. She stared at the shore of England, of all she knew and was familiar with. Good–bye, Grandmama. Good–bye, Roger. Keep thy heart with all diligence, she thought, for out of it are the issues of life.

* * *

   Several hours later, a solitary horseman rode into the tavern courtyard and dismounted. He handed his tired horse to a groom, walked inside and spoke a few moments with the tavernkeeper, who told him that yes, a Lady Devane had been staying here, but that she had sailed early this afternoon. For Virginia, on a ship called the
Brinton
, under Captain Smith. The man, who was tall and wore his blond hair long and pulled back and tied with a ribbon, rubbed his eyes a moment at the tavernkeeper's news. Another lady came looking for the same person, the tavernkeeper informed him, and she raised quite a rumpus. She was resting now in a private room.

   Tony knocked on the door, entered, and pulled a chair to the bed where Diana lay, one arm over her face. She pulled her arm back long enough to see who it was, and long enough for Tony to take in her red, swollen face, without its rouge now.

   "Why did you not tell me?"

   Diana gave a mocking laugh. "What could you have done?" She began to cry.

   "I could have stopped her."

   Diana wiped her eyes. "I tried. God knows I tried. She would not listen. Now I am all alone." She sobbed into her hands. "Tell the tavernkeeper I will pay for the glasses I broke. And the chair."

   "I will take you to Tamworth," Tony said. He rubbed his eyes with his hand again, his face suddenly tired and older–looking.

   "Tamworth!"

   Diana sat up straight in the bed, her hair falling all about her shoulders. "You know whose idea this is, do you not!"

   Tony stared at her, his face taut and disbelieving.

   "Yes! No one else's. I know her." Her face crumpled again. "My daughter. She has sent my daughter away from me. You just take me to Tamworth, Tony Saylor. I have a thing or two I wish to say to my mother. That old witch. I hate her!" Diana kicked her feet against the bed and screamed. "I hate her!"

   At the bar, the tavernkeeper heard her cries, and he crossed himself quickly. "Not again," he said, and sure enough, there came to his ears the sound of something thudding, like a chair being thrown against a wall. He picked up the stub of a pencil and added another sum to those already listed.

* * *

   Diana muttered and cried and swore against her mother throughout the journey to Tamworth. Tony, on the other hand, was almost completely silent, but his face grew steadily more grim and hard. When the carriage drove down the avenue of the limes, the sun was shining in dapples through their spread of leaves, and the corn was young and green in the fields, and the long grass was being scythed for hay. The carriage lurched to a stop, and Diana stepped down into the gravel of the courtyard, Tony following. She pulled hard, furiously, on the door pull, and the two of them could hear the bells jangling in the house. Perryman opened the door, and Diana swept past him.

   "Where is my mother?"

   "Lady Diana," stammered Perryman.

   "Where is she, Perryman? It will do you no good to lie. I know she is here. Tell me now, or I will scream this house down—"

   The Duchess sat on the terrace in the June sun, where she could see and smell her roses, glorious in their fat, lush blooming. She felt old and tired, and she missed Barbara so that now there was a new constant ache added to all her other aches. And even though she continued to pray hard, she was not sure that she had done the right thing. Richard gave her no answers; neither did God. Dulcinea lay sluggishly in her lap; she carried kittens, her first. I, however, thought the Duchess, stroking her cat's back, have no kittens.

   "You interfering, self–righteous old witch."

   The Duchess started and turned. Diana stood in the doorway that opened to the terrace from the library. Tim, sitting on the terrace wall, stood up at Diana's words and stepped forward, but the Duchess motioned him still with a wave of her hand. She faced Diana, waiting, as she had been waiting since Barbara left, for the inevitable.

   "You sent her away! I know you did! You thought of no one but yourself. You are self–righteous and meddling and wrong! Do you hear me, Mother? Wrong!"

   The Duchess flinched.

   "She could die," Diana was saying, her words flying like arrows from her mouth, across the terrace into the Duchess's heart. All words she had thought herself. "Either on the way, or once there. It is across the sea— how could you do it?" Tim stood still, blinking rapidly, uncertain of what to do.

   Behind Diana, the Duchess saw Tony, tall in the shadow of the doorway. She made a sudden, agitated movement at the expression on his face. She turned around to face her roses again, and her hands held on tightly to Dulcinea's fur, so tightly that Dulcinea mewed in complaint and leapt lithely from her lap to the terrace wall and down into the gardens.

   The Duchess's mouth worked. Deserted by all. Annie was at Ladybeth. Perryman was a weak fool. "I did what I thought best—" she began stubbornly.

   "What you thought best!" Diana spat. "You are mad! A candidate for Bedlam! I will have you committed! I swear I will! She has not gone across to the next county. She is crossing the sea in a tiny wooden ship!" Diana's face was ugly, contorted, beyond anger. "I will never forgive you for this! Not for as long as I live!"

   The Duchess kept her back turned. Her daughter's skirts hissed as she walked away from her. Out of the corner of her eye, the Duchess saw Tony, who had not walked away with Diana, who had stayed. He stood next to her chair now, and she glanced up at his face quickly, and then away just as quickly, her heart beating so fast that she thought it would kill her. Richard, thought the Duchess, over the hurting of her heart. Richard.

   Tony knelt down beside her. His blue–gray eyes looked at her, angry, amazed, and she thought, I do not know him now. The boy is gone. He has become a man, and I do not know this man.

   "I love her," he said deliberately, his words striking her like blows.

   Tim's hands clenched and unclenched as he watched the Duchess's face, and he wiped his sweating face with his hand.

   "All Aunt Diana said is true. You are a meddling, self–righteous, interfering old woman—"

   A sob broke from the Duchess. She put her hands up to her eyes.

   "William," she said. "Please."

   "No," said Tony, standing up, towering over her, his face hard and contemptuous. "Not William, but Tony. Your bumbling, stupid Tony. You thought I was not good enough for her. But I am."

   Tears rolled down the Duchess's cheeks. "I want to go to chapel," she said in a faint voice. Tim took a step toward her, but Tony stopped him with a look.

   "Yes," he said. "You go to chapel, and you pray for forgiveness. I hope you receive it from God, Grandmama, because you will never receive it from me."

   "Ah–h–h–h," the Duchess cried, leaning over and bowing her head, rocking with grief, as Tony walked away. Tim picked her up, his own chin trembling. She was tiny in his arms, like a child.

   "I–I did it for the best," she whispered. "I did. I did."

   "Hush, now," Tim said, crying a little himself, walking down the terrace steps with her, determined to get her away from these people; but then someone touched his shoulder. He turned, and the young Duke of Tamworth stood before him, his face still angry, but there was something else in it, too. Compassion? Love? Tim did not know.

   "Give her to me."

   Tim did not move.

   "For God's sake! She is my grandmother! Give her to me!" Gingerly, Tim did so. The Duchess was sobbing so hard that her body was shaking. She clutched the lapels of Tony's coat. "T–Tony," she sobbed. "Oh, T– Tony. Do not h–hate me."

   "Hush," Tony said, and though his face was still hard, Tim let out the breath he had been holding.

   "Hush. Grandmama. You are going to make yourself ill. I will take you to chapel."

   Tim watched the young duke carry his grandmother down the rest of the steps. He found that he was weak in the knees and that he had to sit down. She was still crying, but not as hard. Tim wiped his own eyes and blew his nose. The young duke carried her down the gravel path, his heels crunching against the stones, but as he passed the rose garden, he stopped, and, shifting his grandmother's weight, picked a rose from the garden, a dark, lush, red rose with many petals, and gave it to her, and the Duchess held it to her breast and cried as if her heart were broken. It was a Duke of Tamworth rose. But Tim could not know that. Only Tony and the Duchess did.