by Karleen Koen
“Since when do I not deserve a New Year’s kiss?”
The Duchess embarrassed him, as always she tried to do, but she also amused him, and so he smacked at her cheek, while she touched at something dangling down from the cluster of feathers on her head, something making a clatter.
“Bear claws.” She spoke with what could only be described as tremendous satisfaction. “And look here, this is a necklace of them around my neck. Look at their size. The bears must have been monsters, not like those brown bears the dogs bait across the river. I am wearing a chieftain’s bonnet, or so Barbara says. I’ve had a letter from her, John, this very day, along with these trifles I wear. She sent me a swamp laurel and cuttings for vines, which you’ll need to take on to Tamworth Hall for me. I cannot tell you the weight that has been lifted from my heart. You know what I’ve suffered fretting about whether Barbara made it safely or not, old friend, yes, you do. But where are my manners? You know Sir Christopher?”
“The Duchess and I were speaking of bees,” said Sir Christopher. He was quite old, as tiny now as the Duchess.
“So,” said Sir John, who knew all about the Duchess and her bees. Who in London did not? “You’ve still got bees in your bonnet, have you? I congratulate you on receiving a letter from your granddaughter. She’s well?”
“Quite well, thank you!” The Duchess jangled her bear claws.
“I’ve had letters, too, from my wife. She says there are Gypsies in Tamworth’s woods. They’ve found one of the Gypsy women. She’s with child.”
The Duchess lifted up her skirts, pointed to her feet. She wore some sort of soft slipper.
“Never mind Gypsies. Barbara sent these also, along with a pair for Jane. I forget what these are called.”
I haven’t seen her this elated in months, thought Sir John. I’m glad she’s heard from Barbara.
“Moccasins,” said Sir Christopher, “and made quite well. Look at the beading, the design it makes.”
The Duke of Wharton had stepped forward to join them.
Sir John stiffened. Arrogant young hound, he thought. We’re too old, we’re the party of the past, he’d said to Lady Shrewsborough, as long a Tory as he was. No wonder the young men leave us. Wharton was impious, irreverent, and unstable, but they had needed him. Don’t whine, John, she had replied. I can’t abide it. She and the Duchess were a pair. Of what, was the question.
The Duchess ignored Wharton.
“Barbara said the women who make these chew the leather to softness with their teeth. She’s sent a parcel for Jane and the children, too, and something for the King and all the royal family. Go fetch me something to drink, Wharton. That’s a good boy.—I can’t abide him,” she said to Sir John, as Wharton walked away, “and as cousin to Harriet, with the marriage, he becomes family.”
“Who is here?” said Sir John, looking around.
“Everyone. Sir Gideon Andreas, Lord Sunderland, Lord Holles, Sir Alexander Pendarves.”
“A Whig parley.”
“A marriage party. It won’t hurt you to mix with us. Perhaps you’ll hear something Tories can use. It’s being said the Whigs will sweep the election, John.”
“I know it. My heart is breaking for it. We haven’t the funds to buy votes, Alice. The King himself is giving money to buy Whig votes.”
“Here’s Wharton with my wine. Sir John has come to say good-bye to me before he goes to his home, Wharton. Sir John Ashford is a rarity these days, a man who follows his conscience.”
“Is that for me?” Wharton asked.
The Duchess looked at him, pursed her lips. “Is it?”
Other people in the chamber were moving their way, they’d attracted attention. The Duchess began to introduce them one after another, just as if Sir John did not see them during the week in the corridors of St. Stephen’s, where the House of Commons met.
“You know Sir Gideon Andreas, of course, and Lady Andreas. Lady Andreas is godmother to Harriet.”
A goblet of wine had been put in Sir John’s hand; he smiled in the direction of the woman he assumed was Lady Andreas and gulped down the wine, only to have the goblet immediately refilled by a footman. The guests were in satin coats and full wigs; there were jewels upon the women, at their throats and in their ears; while he was dressed simply, for travel, for he was beginning his journey home this very afternoon. He was stopping by to see Gussy before he left; then he was off, leaving London behind. A note had come from the Duke of Tamworth: “I would very much appreciate it if you might find the time to call upon me before you leave for Ladybeth.” But where was the Duke?
“His Grace will see you now,” a servant said, quietly, into Sir John’s ear. “What’s this?” cried the Duchess. “Are you leaving us? Promise you’ll look in before you go to Ladybeth. Even if I’ve gone up to my bedchamber, have a footman inform me. You must not forget that parcel Barbara sent for Jane. She sent Tony a—now, what was it called?”
“—hawk,” Sir John thought he heard Sir Christopher say as he moved to follow the servant.
“Tomahawk,” the Duchess called out loudly after him. “It’s a war ax, John. They bash in one another’s brains with it.”
“More direct in their violence than we,” said Wharton.
The wine made Sir John feel dizzy and happy as he climbed upstairs. The Duke of Tamworth was in his grandfather’s library on the top floor of the house. It had been years since Sir John had been in this particular chamber, not since Richard Saylor himself was alive and they’d plotted strategy together in the last dangerous days of James II’s precarious reign.
Sir John could remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday: Richard, no duke yet, saying, John, we are going to declare for William of Orange. I am among those who have signed a secret declaration asking him to come over with an armed force. There may be war, and I want you to be free to follow your conscience in it.
Then, unlike now, the party of the King had been Tory, and the opposition Whig, but both Tory and Whig lords had signed the declaration.
Richard had remained faithful to Tory principles under King William and his heir, Queen Anne, but Richard’s grandson Tony might turn Whig; it looked as if he would. He was allying himself by marriage with a Whig family. They had not discussed the coming election. The Duke had been a boy seven years ago, when the last election was held.
The wine made Sir John wish that he and the young Duke might talk of Richard, of old days. He would tell a story Richard had loved, a story from Sir John’s grandfather, who had seen Charles I led to the scaffold to be beheaded, not far from this very house. There was a groan from the crowd when his head was severed with the ax, a great collective groan, his grandfather had said, like one immense sound of fear, as if the beheading had transgressed against God.
The divine right of kings. It was James’s right to rule by virtue of his birth, God having determined that birth. That was what they had struggled with in those days of tumult. Was kingship divine, hereditary and inalienable, or did a king hold power on trust from Parliament? A revolutionary idea, republican, dangerous, but more and more talked of. If James II had not convinced certain great lords of Parliament into thinking he would rule without them, without the sanctions of Parliament, he would have remained on the throne, Catholic or not. And that was the truth of it, so Richard had said, Richard, who was even then becoming a great lord.
I’ve had to wrestle long and hard with my conscience, John, Richard had said to him that night. The struggle of it was there in lines upon Richard’s face, the darkness under his eyes. I give you full leave to follow your conscience in this.
Have you followed yours? he had asked Richard. That was the only time he had ever seen Richard at a loss for words.
One word of understanding from this young man, this grandson of Richard, and while Sir John could never turn Whig, as Wharton had done, he would bend. After all, he was old, and times were changing.
DOWNSTAIRS, THE Duchess looked up from admiring her moccasins to see her
daughter, Diana, marching into the parlor. There was no other word for it than “march.”
Diana spoke to no one, but came directly over to the Duchess. The crimson gown she wore was cut so low that the tops of her nipples showed. There were large jewels on her neck and at her ears. Every man was stopped, staring at her.
“I understand there are letters from Barbara, Mother.”
They weren’t reconciled, she and Diana. Tony had forgiven her for sending Barbara to Virginia. Diana had not. They were cool and distant to each other still. Walpole would have told Diana there was a ship in from Virginia. If I thought she had a heart, I would be grieved for her, the Duchess thought.
“Yes. Letters and parcels.”
“Where is mine?”
“There was none.”
Diana was turning away. She was always turning away. The Duchess felt her heart squeeze for this daughter she had never liked, yet whom Richard had so loved.
“You may read mine, Diana.”
But Diana was walking away, over to the fireplace, dividing the men who talked there like Moses parting a sea. She took a goblet of wine from a servant. “Bring me another,” she said, “and another after that.”
“Letters from Lady Devane,” Tommy Carlyle purred. He smiled down at Diana. “How happy you must be.”
“Does Walpole come as your guest to the wedding?” Lord Sunderland asked her, viciously, knowing Walpole would be with his wife.
She shook her head a moment; she looked like a giantess surrounded by pygmies. “Walpole’s not well, as you know,” she snapped. “Why don’t you just stab him in the heart and have done with it? More wine. Now.”
Charles put a goblet to her hand.
“Congratulate Lord Russel,” said Lord Sunderland. “We’ve been told this day that his wife is with child.”
Diana drank. The wine left a stain against her upper lip. Her tongue came out to flick at it.
“How domestic, Charles,” she said. “Barbara would love it. I congratulate you on her behalf.”
“Someone hit her over the head with the fireplace poker,” said Aunt Shrew, standing near enough to hear. She wore a bright red wig and a gown cut as low as Diana’s, but without the same effect. “You seem unable to tear your eyes from Diana’s gown, Lumpy. The top of it will hold, I assure you.”
“It wouldn’t kill her,” said Tommy Carlyle. “She seems to be taking it hard.”
“Which? Having no letter from Barbara, or what looks like Walpole’s fall from grace? It is the only thing I can stomach about this betrayal of Wharton’s.”
“Both. Divine, isn’t it? How I do adore to see others suffer.”
“I hear someone is buying the land all around Devane House,” Pendarves said to Carlyle.
“Midas Andreas.”
“Why? Building has all but stopped out in that direction. Buying too much land is what helped ruin Lord Devane.”
Carlyle shrugged, went to where Charles stood, looking out a long window at the afternoon. “I hear there is a letter, but only one, from Virginia.”
“Have you also heard that I never pine over former mistresses?”
“Never? What fortitude.”
BEND, RATHER than break: There was wisdom in that, Sir John was thinking. Those among his old friends who were Jacobites, who wooed with such compelling arguments, saying that only revolution would bring Tories into power again, could whistle in the dark for the sake of the memories the sight of this library room aroused, for the sake of that dear termagant downstairs clacking bear claws at the company, for the sake of Richard Saylor, whose grandson this was.
“Compliments of the season, Sir John,” Tony said. The young Duke looked stern, a bit worn.
“Thank you, Your Grace. I return the same to you.” There were account books spread across the table behind which the Duke sat, and a large map of London, the various streets and great squares of houses drawn on it. Hardly a task for one’s wedding day, thought Sir John.
“You’ve been bailiff of my grandmother’s estate for how long?” the Duke asked.
“Since before your grandfather died, Your Grace. Since his mind became dark, and he no longer made sound judgments.”
“A long time.”
Tears came to Sir John’s eyes. Too much wine. I am ready to laugh or cry, he thought. I am a sentimental fool. What had the Duchess said tonight? Something about not knowing who was who anymore, when it came to party principle. It was true. Whigs had taken on Tory ideals and vice versa in the long years of treacherous fighting for favor. What did it matter if he sided once in a while with Whigs, particularly when they espoused an old Tory principle wrapped now in their linen, as long as he could vote his conscience on church matters, which were dear to him?
He plunged in, knowing he was clumsy and had chosen his moment poorly, but wanting the matter clear, that he was a Tamworth man, always had been, only there had been no Tamworth to follow for years, and so he had gone his own way, because the Duchess hadn’t cared. Once Richard was buried, all that was political within her had been buried with him. Now there was a Tamworth again. There will never be Tories in the ministry as long as George is king, the Jacobites said. Those men downstairs did nothing to change that, but perhaps an old Tory and a young Whig could learn from each other.
“Not nearly as long as I’ve been the member in the House of Commons from Tamworth, Your Grace. We’ve not talked of that, and there is the election staring us in the face in the spring. I have had a thought to talk to you tonight, to tell you—”
“There are two thousand pounds of rents missing from my grandmother’s account.”
Time stopped, then started again for John Ashford, and in the moment in which he stared at the young man sitting behind the table, a young man whose glance fell over him contemptuously, he knew that Richard was dead, and the Duchess old, and he aging in a world he no longer understood.
“I—You must give me leave to gather my wits,” he finally managed to say. “The South Sea—I bought shares in the South Sea, like all the other fools in town and countryside. I bought another farm, Your Grace, ordered a new carriage, dowered a daughter too high, did many another foolish thing with what I thought were my riches. When the stock began to fall, I was short of funds, so short that I had to—”
“Steal two thousand pounds and some odd shillings from my grandmother? She counts you as her closest friend, but I would call your action a failure of friendship.”
“No!” Sir John tried to calm himself. “I never meant to hurt your grandmother, for whom I have all the admiration in the world. I had obligations that were insistent, and in the heat of the moment—surely you remember how mad that time was—only last year it was, Your Grace, and men were jumping from windows, slashing their throats. I had immediate obligations that threatened. Everyone was desperate for coin, calling in loans. I could not—”
“Jump from a window? So you stole from my grandmother and from me. The estate is hers only until her death, Sir John. Then, under the terms of my grandfather’s will, it becomes mine.”
We are foes, Sir John thought, in a state of shock. He regards me as foe and fool and thief.
“I cannot put my hands upon such a sum at the moment, but I will write out a mortgage to the Duchess upon Ladybeth Farm even as we speak. Ladybeth is worth far more than what I borrowed—or it will be, when land prices become stable again.”
His hands were shaking, he could not stop them, and the ink blotted and ran, but he was writing out words crookedly upon a sheet of paper he grabbed at random from the table between them. He scarcely knew what he was writing, so upset was he. “If you would allow me a few months, I will have every penny of the money—”
“I do not require another farm, Sir John. And I find I do not require your services as the member in the House of Commons from Tamworth. I won’t have Tamworth served by a—” The Duke did not finish the sentence, but he did not have to.
“Your Grace, you have the account books before you. Lo
ok them over, and you will see that in all the time—”
“I waited for you to come to me, Sir John. Once I found the loss, I thought, There must be an explanation, and Sir John will come to me and give it to both our satisfactions. He is my grandmother’s closest friend. But you did not come, not yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that. I do not think you were going to speak of it today. If my grandmother cannot trust you, I, who do not know you and have never counted upon your friendship in the manner she does, certainly cannot.”
Words seemed to stick in Sir John’s throat. He could feel tears again in his eyes—how different these tears were from those he’d felt coming before—and he said a quick, fierce prayer that he would not weep before this remote, cold young man. “I will return the funds, with interest, within the month. I always had the intention to do so, but—You have my word of honor.”
“Then no more need be said. Good evening, Sir John.”
“Your Grace, your grandmother—”
“I have not spoken of this matter to my grandmother, nor will I. But I remain silent out of regard for her and not for you.”
The young man’s contempt could not be borne.
“You’re scarcely wet behind the ears,” Sir John heard himself say. “My father owned Ladybeth and his father owned it before him, and they were able to live decent lives. They and men like them, honest men of the land, made this country what it is today. In my time, I’ve seen taxes upon land rise, and income from that same land fall. I’ve seen the great lords take more and more for themselves. I’ve seen good men reduced to little or nothing because they wouldn’t go to court and lick some flatterer’s boots and so be given a place or office. Yet any clerk with a head for figures and too heartless to forgive loans may call himself a banker, like that hard-eyed son of an old Dutch merchant, that Gideon Andreas downstairs, whose father was wise enough to ride in on William’s coattails and be—”