Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  There was some new tension between her mother and father. Her father had brought it back with him from London at the New Year. There was the sound of raised voices from behind the heavy thickness of their bedchamber door. Her mother’s eyes were red-rimmed at times, as if she had been crying. Her father’s answer to any question was short, and the children bothered him, when never they used to. Strangers came to call, late at night, when the house was asleep. Jane woke from her bed and peeped out the window, saw her father leading their horses to the stable. What was the secret? When she asked her mother, her mother told her to be quiet, not to speak of it again if she had any care for her family.

  And then Laurence Slane just showing up one afternoon. An acquaintance from London, said her father, an actor. She saw him and her father walking in Tamworth’s woods. What did her father talk of with an actor? Why did Slane ride five and six miles away to an inn in another village? He is hiding from those to whom he owes money, her father said. The theater in London always closed for the winter, so an actor might owe funds.

  Why did she feel that wasn’t true?

  Come to London and see Gussy, said Slane. He must come to me, she answered. Do you want to be right, asked Slane, or do you want to be happy?

  The stillroom was suddenly too silent.

  “Amelia, come and give Mama a kiss.”

  No answer. She looked under the table, where her daughter Amelia had been playing with Dulcinea. No one was there.

  “IT’S MORE than I can bear, Annie,” said the Duchess. “Thirty years we’ve known each other, and now we might be strangers. He returns my notes to him unopened. Unopened.”

  Annie, brushing the Duchess’s hair, didn’t reply. The Duchess continued to attempt reconciliation with Sir John, and he would not allow it. She would not give up, and he would not give in. Annie didn’t know how it would end.

  “And this letter from Barbara,” said the Duchess. “I cannot believe Hyacinthe is kidnapped.”

  “You’re shivering.” At once, Annie put a shawl around the Duchess’s shoulders, then went to the fire and stoked it higher.

  “You’d think it February instead of the beginning of March.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone in the doorway, someone small. The cat, Dulcinea, sauntered into the bedchamber.

  “Look whom Dulcinea brings,” Annie said to the Duchess.

  Jane’s daughter Amelia walked forward to the chair where the Duchess sat, glancing at the Duchess with a wise, sideways look. She pointed to the magnificent portrait by Watteau.

  “That is Bab. I love Bab.” Amelia’s face was plump; her neck was plump; her arms were plump.

  I wager the little legs under that gown are plump, thought the Duchess, staring down at the child, who gave her back stare for stare. She’ll know something. Children always know something.

  The Duchess patted her lap to Jane’s child. “Come and sit here.”

  “Yes, Your—what am I to call you? I forget.”

  “Your Grace.”

  “Your Grace.”

  Two peas in a pod, thought Annie, going behind the Duchess’s chair and beginning to pin up her hair.

  “Who visits your grandfather these days, Amelia?”

  “A man with black brows. You are very old. I am four. How old are you?”

  “A hundred and four. A man with black brows, heh?”

  “Amelia.” Jane stood in the doorway.

  Amelia rolled her eyes at the Duchess, as if to say, We are in trouble now.

  “Ha! This child is the image of her grandfather, Annie, may she lead him a merry chase. In another few weeks, all over England, men will be voting for who will sit in the Commons for the next seven years, and for the next seven years, Tamworth’s man will wear an earring. An earring.”

  The Duchess referred to Tommy Carlyle, who was Tony’s choice to represent Tamworth.

  Jane heard what you said, thought Annie. It is no good trying to pretend you were talking of something else.

  “Jane, you and this child stay and have crumbling cake with me.”

  It will do you no good, thought Annie. Jane never tells much.

  “Annie, ring for cake and tea. Amelia, we will have crumbling cake and honey rings. Bah. This might be February. The only thing which tells me it is March is all the robins.”

  “Their red breasts are crimson surprises.”

  “A pretty image, Jane. Crimson surprises amid the dreariness.”

  “Dreary, dreary, dreary,” said Amelia. “Grandpapa is dreary.”

  “Crumbling cake gives her wind. I will be up half the night.” Annie, on her way to obey the Duchess, whispered to Jane: “Watch her. She can’t be trusted.”

  “Well, now, Jane, who is this man with the dark brows I hear about?”

  Jane stammered, caught off guard by the Duchess’s directness. She was certain her father would wish her to say nothing.

  “A—A friend from London.”

  “What friend?”

  Jane was saved from answering by the Duchess’s steward, Perryman, who as always resembled a pigeon with his puffed-out chest. “Forgive me for interrupting, Your Grace, but Tim has found a person in the woods over near the next village,” said Perryman.

  “And what is Tim doing in the next village?”

  “A sweetheart, I believe. Thrown from his horse—”

  “Tim’s been thrown from a horse?”

  “The person.”

  “Well, send a carriage to fetch this person. I’m surprised that you had to ask. Things have come to a pretty pass when we don’t help our fellowman here at Tamworth. Now, then, Jane, who is it you said visits from London?”

  I didn’t say, thought Jane, as you well know. “I don’t think you know him.”

  “I know many people, Jane.”

  “Have you heard anything further from Barbara?” Jane crossed her fingers for luck. It might work. Sometimes, the Duchess’s mind floated away like a cloud in a summer sky.

  “Not a word, other than that dreadful letter to say Hyacinthe was gone. I’ve written her to come home. Louisa, my sister-in-law, wrote to tell me London was in a ferment about it, that there was a broadsheet bringing up the South Sea Bubble again. Barbara’s had her share of sorrow, Jane, more than her share. She loved Hyacinthe as if he were her own child. Spoiled him. The tricks he pulled when he was here with me, letting my geese out, fighting with stable boys. ‘You ought to cane him,’ I told her. She didn’t listen. Tony promised he would call upon the King on Barbara’s behalf, but what can any of us do from here? Tony ought to go to Virginia. I’ve written to Abigail to tell her I think he should go. I should never have sent her there in the first place. I regret it now. Pirates. I had a thought of pirates. Annie will tell you. I dreamed of them, last fall, long before this happened. Pirates took Hyacinthe. I know it. I feel it. Pirates are said to roam up and down the colonial coast, even though the worst of them were hanged several years ago….”

  Safe, thought Jane, I’m safe.

  An hour later, as Jane left Tamworth, the carriage was rumbling down the drive. She and Amelia stood near a tree to watch, both of them equally curious.

  “It’s Grandfather’s friend,” said Amelia, as footmen carried Laurence Slane into the house.

  FROM TIM’S arms, the Duchess stared down frowningly at the actor, Laurence Slane, whom she’d seen in London. Was this the man with dark brows who visited Sir John? It would have to be. Now, why would Laurence Slane visit Sir John Ashford? The Duchess pursed her lips.

  Slane was muttering, and his movements were restless, dangerous, his arms flailing out, so that Annie, who was trying to tend the deep gash on his brow, said to Tim, “Come and help me. Hold his arms.”

  “It’s not French he’s speaking,” said the Duchess, listening intently. “I know French.”

  “What then? Spanish? I’m going to have to sew this.” Annie shook her head. “We’ll need someone else to help hold him. It is going to hurt.”

  Come out, come ou
t, wherever you are! Lucius laughed to himself and hid behind the altar. The King, his friend James, was visiting, and though James was six years older, making him fourteen to Lucius’s eight, they played hide-and-seek. It was an honor to his family for the young King to visit.

  You make him smile, Lucius, his mother said. He has great need of that.

  The king moved slowly down the aisle, one hand on the hilt of the sword tied to his belt. Lucius put his head out, then pulled it back in quickly, laughing to himself. The King was close now. He was walking up the altar steps. Lucius backed into a corner of the marble altar, holding his breath. He could see the King’s legs. Suddenly, he lunged, grabbing an ankle, and Jamie shouted, and Lucius began to laugh, and Jamie, dark eyes shining, suddenly did, too, high laughter, clear laughter, the laughter of a boy. His courtiers forget, his mother said, that he is still a boy. Jamie’s father had died in the last year. All hope now rested on Jamie.

  You frightened me, Duncannon, the King said, but he was smiling. He pulled off a ring, giving it to Lucius. You’ll be the best of my servants, someday, the one I trust most.

  “Italian, I think,” said the Duchess.

  THE NEXT afternoon, Jane walked through the woods that separated Ladybeth from Tamworth Hall. Her father was waiting for her near the stream.

  “He is not awake yet, Father. He is feverish, making no sense, Annie said. I saw him. Annie let me go in and put the plaster Mother made upon his forehead, but I couldn’t give him the letter. The Duchess asked if he was the man who’d been visiting you.”

  “Bloody hands of Christ Jesus our Lord! How does she know that? Has she spies behind every tree? She is impossible, she has always been impossible, and she will never change. What did you say?”

  “I said, no, that I did not know him, that he had not been to Ladybeth.”

  “Good, good.”

  Her father was almost feverish himself. “Go again tomorrow and see how he does. They’ll think nothing of your visiting. I’ll have your mother make something else to take him. And if he is awake, you must give him the letter.”

  “What if he doesn’t wake?”

  “He must. He will.” Sir John put his arm around Jane, and they walked toward Ladybeth.

  “Tell me what is happening? Tell me why the letter is so important. Tell me what you hide, Father. I know you hide something. You have since New Year’s. You can trust me.”

  Without breaking his stride, he hugged her to him, carrying her against his side a full step or two, so that she was lifted off the ground. “I know I can trust you, Janie, but this I cannot share.”

  “Gussy? Does it involve Gussy?”

  “No.” He said it so quickly that she knew it did.

  THE WOMAN in Tamworth’s woods stopped. Her pupils, if anyone had cared to look, were distended, so that the odd green shade of her eyes could hardly be seen. She gave a cry, bent over, panting like a dog in summer when there is no water near. Her belly heaved, rippled, as if it had a life of its own. It did: a life trying to be born.

  The woman walked a few steps farther, stopping when the pain was too enormous, holding on to trees, panting. Another step. Another. The pressure was so great. The child would be born in the mud and cold.

  There was the back of a great house. The woman walked a few steps, fell. She began to crawl, stopping when the ripple of her belly, the pressure, seemed as if it would burst her apart. Making little cries, she managed to crawl to the kitchen garden, where green sprouts showed through the hay covering. The woman lay on her side, her body making spasms that arched her into the shape of a bow. “Help,” she tried to say, but no words came out of her mouth.

  Annie sat by the fire in the kitchen, waiting for water to boil. Pulling a book out of her pocket, she put it in her lap, glanced around. There was only Tim, sitting at the great oak table cracking open walnuts. She began to read.

  “‘One morning he pulls off his diamond ring, and writes upon the glass of my sash in my chamber this line—“You I love, and you alone,” ’” Annie read, her heart palpitating with the boldness of it. It was Defoe’s book, which the Duchess had given her to burn, and which she had been reading since.

  “What are you reading?”

  Annie started, slipped the book into the pocket of her apron. “Nothing.”

  “Something. The Defoe book,” said Tim, standing.

  Annie stood, too, moved so that there was some distance between her and Tim. Their time together with the Duchess in London had made him much less afraid of her. In fact, sometimes he dared to tease her. He would not be above chasing her down. He was bold and impudent, a bad servant. No wonder the Duchess adored him.

  “It is not the Defoe book. It is a book of sermons—What’s that?”

  “Your left eye squints when you lie.”

  “Hush. Listen.”

  “It’s the wind. It is cold enough for January outside.”

  Annie went to the kitchen door, opened it, and stepped outside.

  “Tim!” she cried. “Hurry!”

  SLANE OPENED his eyes, but with effort. It hurt to lift his eyelids, hurt more than he could have imagined such a thing hurting. Carefully, he felt the bandage at his brow, but just the touch of his hands made him wince. He sat up carefully, the throb in his head intensifying, like a drummer tapping harder and harder. He felt sick.

  Where am I? he thought through the drumming. Then: How long have I been here?

  He tried to stand, but could not. He sat on the bed, willing himself upright. The effort made him grit his teeth and break into a sweat. Standing, he felt sick, as if he would faint. The throb in his head was becoming all there was. It was hard to keep his eyes open against it. He managed to pull on his breeches under his nightshirt. He kept his head completely level. Even the slightest jar to it made him groan.

  Out in the hall, he had to stop, one hand to the wall, to keep from falling. His head was large, enormous, a giant iron ball someone was hitting with a mallet. At any moment the iron would split open and he would be nothing. He groped from one piece of furniture in the hall to another, trying to get his bearings, to keep concentrated upon what he was doing. There were stairs. Careful, one foot down slowly, hand on the railing, careful, then the other foot, pull yourself with your hands, keep your head level. God, the pain.

  He had managed to get upon a lower floor. He was in a wider hall, far wider. Likely this hall held the bedchambers of the owners of the house. He put his hand to the nearest door, opened it, gritted his teeth at the nausea in his middle. I’m going to faint, he thought. He saw that he was in a withdrawing chamber, with draperies the color of pale butter. There would be a bedchamber beyond, windows he could look out of.

  So there was.

  He leaned a moment on the knob of the door, wondering if he could walk to the windows. There was a great four-poster bed with its curtains drawn nearly closed. Portraits in heavy gilt frames hung from faded velvet ribbons. A cat leaped from nowhere and wound itself around his legs. He moved toward the light of the windows, but one of the portraits caught his eye.

  He stood a moment before it, swaying. Beautiful girl, captured in that moment of time in which she was moving into womanhood, with diamonds in her hair and around her neck, diamonds upon the edge of the glorious fan she held open.

  “Barbara,” he said, aloud.

  “How do you know my granddaughter’s name, Laurence Slane?”

  Startled, he turned, and the sudden movement was his undoing. His head seemed to burst open and, as the cat wove between his legs, he fell.

  “THE AFTERBIRTH. Did she push it out? If I don’t get all the afterbirth, she’ll die.” Everything about Annie was sharp, efficient. The Gypsy woman lay on the floor before the kitchen fire, and the cries of a newly born baby were louder and louder, rising up to the high, dark, vaulted kitchen rafters. A bell among a series of bells, an indication that someone upstairs wanted a servant, began to ring.

  “The Duchess’s bell! Now of all times!” Annie looke
d over at Jane, who had walked in in the midst of the birth and now held the woman’s shoulders. “Go upstairs for me, Jane. See what it is she needs. Tim! Give the child to Cook and go with Jane.”

  Upstairs, in the bedchamber, Jane half walked, half ran toward the bed, speaking so fast that half her words were swallowed, “Your Grace, Annie could not come to you. The Gypsy woman—you remember, she sat in church three Sundays in a row—well, she is in your kitchen at this moment and just gave birth to a baby. It is a boy, and she is in a very bad way. Almost starved.”

  The Duchess was staring at Tim’s hands. They were covered in blood. Tim looked down at them. “The baby,” he said. “I was holding the baby.”

  Without a word, the Duchess pointed toward the other side of her bed, and Tim walked around to see.

  Dulcinea sat upon Slane’s chest, purring loudly. Tim looked over to the Duchess, staring at him from among her nest of bed pillows, the cap she wore dwarfing her thin face.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  “Apart from having strangers barge into my bedchamber at their will, I’m fine. Take him to his bed, Tim. Jane, is this Gypsy woman going to die?”

  The groan Slane made at being moved made Jane clutch her hands.

  “I’m not certain, Your Grace. Please, Your Grace, may I go now? I am worried for the woman.”

  “Yes, yes, go on.”

  “Well, Dulcinea”—the Duchess stroked the cat, who had leaped up onto the bed—“Gypsies in my kitchen, actors in my bedchamber.” She pursed her lips. How did Slane know Barbara? How?