Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  The question so surprised him that he answered honestly. “Yes.”

  “What do you know of bees?”

  “Bees?”

  “I wish to send some to my granddaughter in Virginia, but my beemaster says they will die on the way over. He has a small mind, not able to see the forest for the trees. He’s good at what he does, mind you. My Tamworth honey is the best in the county, but he has no imagination. Tending the bee skeps, preventing swarms is enough for him. I’ve talked to Sir Christopher Wren—he built St. Paul’s Cathedral,” she said, as if Slane was a barbarian and did not know. “I’ve even spoken with Sir Isaac Newton—not that I believe white light is made up of colors, but in spite of that, Sir Isaac is a clever man. They’re all clever men, and one of them, you would think, could design a bee skep that would keep the creatures alive across the ocean. Do the Irish keep bees, Slane?”

  He was saved from answering by the Princess of Wales, who was up from her chair, walking about the chamber, surrounded by her maids of honor like a cow surrounded by nymphs.

  “Do you still play cards with Lady Shrewsborough?” the Princess asked him.

  “Whenever I may.”

  “He bests me, too, Your Highness,” said Aunt Shrew, “more times than I care to acknowledge.”

  “Bring him to a card game of mine some afternoon.”

  “I would be honored,” said Slane, but the Princess was turning away. He was dismissed. She and the Duchess were talking about smallpox. Someone tapped Slane on the shoulder—a lady-in-waiting with his bag of coins for payment. Forgotten except for a few lingering looks from the more bold of the maids of honor, he walked from the chamber. The Princess was telling the Duchess that she was going to give her children the new treatment for smallpox.

  That was the topic in London this winter, other than the feud between Walpole and Sunderland. A cure for smallpox had been brought back from her travels by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a vivacious woman who was the daughter of a duke and Slane’s favorite Jacobite agent.

  “I am going to have it done to ten men at Newgate Prison. If they survive and are only lightly poxed, then I will have it done to my children,” Slane heard the Princess say as he stepped out into the hall.

  One scratched the arm lightly with a needle dipped in the active pox, then became sick, perhaps even broke into spots and fever. But the spots and the fever were not deadly, did not disfigure or kill as smallpox did. Some physicians opposed the practice, saying it was ungodly because it came from Turkey. Lady Mary’s husband had been ambassador there, and she’d seen the custom.

  If Wharton’s child had had the treatment, he might not have died, thought Slane. Louis XIV had died of smallpox, and two of the Duchess of Tamworth’s sons. It was the grimmest of reapers.

  “HAVE YOU heard from Lady Devane in Virginia?” the Princess asked.

  “No.”

  “Will she settle there, do you think?”

  “After tomorrow,” said the Duchess, “it does not matter.”

  It matters to me, thought the Princess.

  OUTSIDE, THE moon was full. It flung light randomly over building and shadow, snow and ice. Slane stood staring up a moment at it, his mind filled with impressions of the women he’d just left, their soft arms, flowing gowns, light laughter, flirting eyes—all colors—above elaborate fans. There was a shivering, delicate lightness to it all that made him feel off balance and exhilarated. He’d go home, change out of these clothes that revealed too much of who he was, put on his plainer, simpler clothing, and go to Pontack’s tavern.

  Thus the women celebrate the wedding tomorrow, he thought. And the men? Hours later, in the confusion and noise of Pontack’s, Slane pulled his chair up where the Duke of Wharton was sitting. Whores sat on various laps, trading kisses for coins, pulling down their gowns to show their breasts, if the coins were plenty enough. Two of them were already quarreling. No one would notice him.

  “You’re drinking,” he said to Wharton.

  “Only a little ale for me, duenna.” Duenna was the Spanish word for chaperone. “I made a promise. I have the others drink what I cannot. Look at Tamworth. He hasn’t had a drop since Masham’s death, but tonight he might be me.”

  “What’s he talking about?”

  “His grandfather; it’s all he’s been talking for an hour. Go and listen. It’s worth hearing. He tells the same story over and over.”

  “People were talking of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu tonight.”

  Wharton’s eyes, the lids hooded like a bird’s, blinked once. “What did they say?”

  “They were talking about her remedy for smallpox, of how some physicians call it ungodly.”

  “I’ll tell her. She will be angry. She says it is because she is a woman that her remedy is not accepted more easily.”

  “I must meet her.”

  Again, there was that slow blink. “Why, Slane?” Lady Mary and Wharton were lovers. Such difficult duty you give me, Slane, Lady Mary had said. She lied. She was more than half in love with Wharton.

  Slane laughed. “So that I know as much as possible about you.”

  He moved to sit near Tony, who was talking to no one in particular, but talking just the same.

  “They said my grandfather was found wandering through his camp like a vagabond, which was likely the first sign, but everyone tried to shield him from the talk. Then it was said he wept before a meeting of the Queen’s ministers. After that, there was no holding gossip back. All the stories came out, swirled through London like the snow outside. Wart, are you listening?”

  Wharton grinned evilly at Slane, made a motion of drinking.

  “He’s listening,” Slane said quietly, behind Tony. He could see that Tony was so drunk he would remember little in the morning. None of these men would, with the exception, and it was an exception, of Wharton, who, as he said, was keeping his promise.

  “I was just a boy when the rumors started. They said my grandfather had broken down once too often during campaign, had to be replaced, though his command was not taken from him. He was so well known, and the war was still enduring—two wars, one upon a battlefield against Louis XIV, one in the cabinet room of Queen Anne. The rumors just kept growing. I didn’t understand them, but I understood the insinuations behind them, of madness, insanity, possession. A sign of the devil, they said, a curse. Have you seen the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem? They call it Bedlam. The men and women are caged, naked, tied to the walls of their cells like animals. They howl in their own filth.”

  Slane had seen it. It was one of the sights of London, one of the places young noblemen liked to go, just as they liked to visit Bridewell after a debauch and see the imprisoned women whipped, because the women were stripped to the waist beforehand.

  “Some rise by sin, some by virtue fall. Tommy Carlyle said that. My grandmother brought my grandfather to Tamworth. I came to visit whenever I could. I was heir by then, and so in that, at least, I got my way. To me, my grandfather just seemed quieter, more gentle than ever, having need of more rest. We worked in the rose garden together. We walked. He let me rummage in his cabinets of precious medals and cameos, something Barbara and Harry were not allowed to do.”

  “Barbara and Harry?” prompted Slane. Tony turned to look at him, seemed to focus a little.

  “My cousins. You haven’t met them. It would be hard now to meet Harry. He’s dead. And Barbara, she’s gone far away. Too boisterous, my grandfather thought them. He collected lead soldiers, Slane, he had hundreds of them. We used to arrange them into his battle plans, small men of lead, their regimental colors bright with paint. Retreat, march, feint, fall back, charge. ‘You are good for him, Tony; he is happy with you,’ my grandmother said. Have you met my grandmother, Slane? A word of praise from her is rare. She never liked it that I was heir. There were others, you see—my oldest uncle, his son, my father. They all died, and so it came to me. She never thought much of me.”

  “I met her this evening. I don’t think she thought
much of me, either.”

  Tony smiled, a shy smile, grave. “Barbara and Harry, they didn’t think much of me, either. I was the interloper. I used to stand at a window and watch them. ‘Anticipate your enemy,’ my grandfather said. ‘Hit him hard and strong with your foot troops.’ Obviously, Barbara and Harry were the stuff of generals.”

  The scene around Slane and Tony was becoming wilder, the women half undressed, Charles with his face pressed between the breasts of a young whore. There was spilled wine everywhere, and the women’s voices were too shrill; some of the men were already so drunk they couldn’t stand, while Wharton sat at his part of the table, eyes gleaming, as if he were the conjurer who had summoned it all into being.

  “‘I will thrash you, heir,’ said Harry. He did it, too, knocking out a tooth.”

  “And Barbara?”

  “She taunted me as I bled. I had no idea how to deal with them, except to avoid them.”

  “A wise choice.”

  “I never minded my grandfather’s silences, the vagueness. I loved him, Slane. My grandfather was very kind, and I knew he was a great hero, so that his kindness seemed even more special. There was no criticism, no anger, no expectation which I did not meet, ever. We were in among the roses. ‘You cut the stem this way,’ my grandfather said. I’ve had too much wine, Slane. Somewhere, in the distance—I remember the hum of bees, the fragrance of roses—I remember the sound of Barbara and Harry quarreling. They were near. They liked to spy on us, to tease me, later. My grandfather scratched his forearm on a thorn, and he bled. I didn’t notice at first. I was tending the roses the way he’d shown me. I had no idea there was anything wrong until my grandfather cried out, this shocking cry, this groan from the heart.”

  Slane sat very still. In his mind’s eye, he was in the garden he’d never seen, with Tony and his grandfather, the great hero, made mansized now.

  “‘Where are my boys?’ he said. He was so loud. My grandfather was never loud, never shouted. ‘My boys, my boys,’ he said. He wouldn’t stop asking where they were, and he kept pointing to the blood on his arm. Well, finally, I took him by the hand and led him down the path to Tamworth Church, to the chapel there. That’s where the coffins of my father and uncles are. It was the wrong thing to do, but it was all I could think of. My grandfather sat on the marble bench in the silent chapel and began to weep. ‘Dead,’ he said. ‘They are all dead.’ How he wept, Slane. I cannot describe it—”

  A whore sat down in Tony’s lap, kissed his cheek, and slipped her hand into his pocket, looking for something to steal.

  “Leave him be,” said Slane. He gave her a coin. “Go on, there are plenty of others. Tell me the rest of the story, Tamworth.”

  “He was weeping like a woman. All the rumors I had overheard about his madness, the whispers, flew into my head, and I ran all the way back to Tamworth Hall to tell my grandmother. She was angry. ‘Never take him there again,’ she told me. Madman, madman, boo hoo hoo, that was Barbara and Harry later on the terrace—there is this big terrace at Tamworth, sloping in gentle steps down into the gardens. They were playing out the scene as they’d seen it, our grandfather being led weeping from the chapel. My grandmother had them spanked and sent them to bed without supper, but not me.”

  “Which finished you in their regard.”

  “Yes. She allowed me supper—in spite of my stupidity, she said—but I could not eat. I stared down at the silver plate. It had a dim sheen, I remember it still, and I was aware of a loss greater even than that of my father. I never knew my father, not really. Something precious, rare and fine, not easily replaced, not easily found to begin with, was gone. It sat in the chapel, sobbing like a woman, until servants brought it home again and put it to bed. Whom did he mourn? His sons or all those soldiers who had died in charges and counter-charges? Perhaps the two became mixed in his mind. ‘O, noble warrior. O, valiant man. We will not see your like again.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “Caesar White, a poet, wrote a requiem poem to my grandfather. I am going to be sick.”

  “Here, let me help you outside. Follow me.”

  Outside, Slane walked a little away, breathing in the cold air, glad to be out of the tavern with its noise and smoke and mayhem.

  Tony stood, head leaned against a wall, retching.

  O, noble warrior. O, valiant man. We will not see your like again. Slane thought of the Blackbird, when still a boy, hiding out in this and that castle because France had lost the wars and Louis XIV was not allowed to succor him any longer. He thought of friends who had died beside him in Scotland in the awful winter of 1715, when they knew they’d lost but fought on anyway, thought of his own father, drowned during the storm that had tossed Jamie’s French invasion ships about like so many sulfur matches thrown upon water. He had been thirteen when his father died. He’d seen him drown. He would never forget it, watching water lap over the place where his father had been, then somehow making it back to France, where his courageous, vibrant mother waited. He’d had to tell her. She’d held out her arms to him, and for the last time, he had stepped into boyhood and wept in them. Your Jamie is cursed, said his mother, but that was in 1718, as yet another invasion, this time helped by Sweden and Spain, got all the way launched, and was yet again destroyed by a storm. Leave him, Lucius, she’d said. Slane shivered.

  Tony did not move his head from the wall.

  “‘Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; / Then to that twenty, add a hundred more: / A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on / To make that thousand up a million,’” recited Tony.

  What’s this? thought Slane. I should have recited it tonight. It’s beautiful.

  “‘Treble that million, and when that is done, / Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun….’ I never once kissed her in passion.”

  “Whom, Your Grace?”

  “Barbara.”

  Barbara, thought Slane, you’ll be at the wedding tomorrow, in this man’s mind. He put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. I married my true love, he thought. I lost her, but for a time I had her. Ah, Tamworth, you do your duty and it has its price.

  “Beloved,” said Tony, and Slane closed his eyes. This was what came of staying in one place too long. A man began to care for people, even those who were his enemies.

  “Tell me what you know of the death of Wharton’s child,” Slane said.

  “Smallpox,” Tony answered, still without moving his forehead from the wall. “There was smallpox in London, and although he asked her not to, his wife brought the boy to the city.”

  “Why?”

  “She did not wish to be separated from Wharton. They married when they were both fifteen. Wharton was wild for her, for a time. But his father died, and Wharton blamed himself. His father had not wanted the marriage, had been angry that Wharton had acted as he did. After his father died, Wart went away to Europe, leaving his wife behind; when he came home, she was interesting to him again, and they had a child. He never sees her now.”

  “Tell me about Lady Mary.”

  “She is some ten years older than Wart. She lives alone, without her husband. Writes poetry.”

  Slane smiled at what was in Tony’s voice, as if Lady Mary’s writing poetry made him afraid of her. “I think you need a companion to walk you home, Your Grace.”

  They walked silently through the streets, Slane going after Tony and grabbing him by the coattails when he wandered off course. The moon lit their way like a lantern, and in some of the streets were the fires to keep the beggars from freezing. They walked into the courtyard of Saylor House.

  “Good-bye, Your Grace.”

  “Come to my wedding. I want you to come to my wedding.”

  “I think you’ll regret the invitation tomorrow, Your Grace.”

  Slane’s shoes made a crunching sound in the melting snow as he walked back toward his lodging under the moon’s full light. He stood at the window in his room and looked out. The moon spilled down like soft silver. O, noble warrior. O, v
aliant man. We will not see your like again. The words kept echoing through his mind. He remembered when word of Richard Saylor’s madness had come; there was celebration at the French court. He kept seeing Richard Saylor standing in his garden weeping for his boys. And in Slane’s heart was not hatred, or jubilation, but compassion, for Tony, for the Duchess—and, oddly enough, for himself, for he, too, knew what it was to lose someone you loved.

  I’m losing my edge, thought Slane, and he sighed.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  CURSING HIMSELF FOR HAVING CALLED ON THE DAY OF THE wedding, Sir John Ashford walked into a parlor at Saylor House. Bunches of Christmas holly and ivy were cascading out of the Chinese vases, and there was ivy gathered at the corners of the famous and enormous tapestries on the walls of this chamber, the ivy twining greenly into the battle scenes of rearing horses and grimacing struggles. Roses and lilies were intertwined through it all, for the wedding. The young Duke of Tamworth married Harriet Holles at nine tonight. Sir John had sent his regrets. His gift for them had been given to Gussy to bring.

  He cleared his throat. He did not see the Duchess among the people standing before the fireplace. But he did see the Duke of Wharton, and his face went red. Traitor, he thought.

  He glared at Wharton, before seeing what was even worse—the hulking courtier Tommy Carlyle, rouge bright on each cheek and that infamous earring in one ear.

  That does it, thought Sir John. I’ll make some quick excuse and call upon the Duke of Tamworth when I return in January. But just then, a footman touched his arm.

  “Her Grace, the Duchess of Tamworth, asks me to bring you to her.”

  The Duchess sat in a corner, talking to Sir Christopher Wren. What is that contraption upon her head? wondered Sir John. There were feathers and whatever, springing out of it. She looked a sight, and it was clear she did not care. Sir John smiled and bowed very formally to the Duchess, the bow old-fashioned and stiff.