Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  “I need a simple port building, not a monument.”

  “Nothing fancy, good, strong brick. You could make it there. Perry here has brickmakers among his slaves—”

  “Had,” Colonel Perry interrupted gently. “I no longer own slaves.”

  “Well, your daughter, then. Simple lines, I thought, a column or two, three, making a porch, where the men might gather and talk. If you were to put in a tavern, a few beds for those who have far to travel and might like a night to rest, it would be sound commerce. You’d have the makings of a town.”

  “Are you going to design the tavern, too?” The Duchess’s question was tart. They took it upon themselves to redo First Curle. Barbara was in the thick of it, urging them on.

  “I might. I did the college building in Williamsburg, you know. Why not a port building and a tavern? Wren’s, you could call it. Now, I really must leave. Think on those nomads. How on earth would they transport bees? I am intrigued by the question.”

  Wren was bowing to Harriet, walking down a gravel path to the gate the way he always walked, as if there was always much to do and little time to do it.

  “Who is Duncannon?” Harriet said to Colonel Perry. Jests about Duncannon were fashionable among the young people.

  “Who?”

  “The King’s dwarf. Isn’t that wonderful? We laughed and laughed over it.”

  “I have another for you. Who is Duncannon?”

  “Who?”

  “Robert Walpole’s horse.”

  Harriet gave a trill of laughter, and the baby in her arms laughed too, clapped his hands.

  “Your port,” Colonel Perry said to the Duchess, “I am not the only one who might be interested in putting some coin into it. Wren is interested, so are Sir Alexander, here, and Lady Shrewsborough, Sir John Ashford.”

  “Sir John hasn’t an extra coin. The South Sea ruined him.” She spoke harshly, too harshly, but she couldn’t help it. John’s plight upset her. And what the South Sea didn’t take, contributing to Jamie’s failed invasion did. Not to mention this arrest. John had left his farm, his fields, to deal with it. I was more selfish than you, Richard, always. I only knew how to love when it was too late. For what do I sit here and yearn? Peace? Quiet? Lost love? That the dead rise from the grave and walk with me again? Forgive me, I would say to the dead. I didn’t know.

  Tony was pushing Harriet away. The old Duchess sat here at Saylor House and saw it, a perfectly good marriage—the possibility of true tenderness in it—going sour. Because Harriet was not Barbara. Well, she would never be.

  “Carlyle was at Walpole’s today,” said Colonel Perry.

  “That surprises me,” answered Harriet.

  “Walpole would not receive him. Carlyle said he would return later, with Barbara.”

  Tony and Barbara had quarreled over Carlyle. You abandon him, she’d said. Tony told her not to interfere in matters that did not concern her. The running of my house and my estate and my men in Parliament are my affair, he’d said to her, as cold as ever the Duchess had heard him, no concern of yours.

  Carlyle is of little use to me now, he’d said later to the Duchess, when Barbara had left. I’m sorry for it, but it is the truth.

  He was turning cold. She could see it, did not know how to stop it. He was walling himself away from life. And in part it was her fault. There he was now, walking back with his sister. I’ve helped to do this, thought the Duchess, with my pushing and prodding, my interfering and plotting. I should have left all alone.

  “Jane Cromwell was at Walpole’s when I was there,” said Colonel Perry. “The children were with her. They sat in a drawing room until Walpole’s servants moved them on. I was not the only one affected by the sight of it. Is there any word of when treason trials may begin?”

  If Gussy dies, I won’t be able to bear it, thought the Duchess. Somehow, it would be like watching Richard die all over again. Her fault, that Richard had died. Here, in London, guilt and regret would not lie still, quivered and flailed and tormented her. I’ll die if Gussy dies, she thought, I shall.

  Last night Annie had brushed her hair. She’d stared at herself in the mirror, thinking, Where did I go? How could all her Alices—girl, woman, wife, mother, countess, duchess, widow—be contained in the tiny, withered woman staring back at her? But they were. All her Alices, and all Alice’s deeds, good and bad.

  Absolve me, angel, thought the Duchess, looking over at Perry, who held the baby and talked easily with Tony and Harriet. If only he could.

  A FEW streets over, Barbara touched the funeral garland she and Bathsheba had made for the Walpoles, in her mind a country saying she’d told Amelia the other day: Marry in brown, never live in town; marry in red, wish yourself dead. She and Bathsheba had made the garland, and it was beautiful. Composed of two small hoops of wood, with bands crossing them, the garland resembled an open, arched crown. White roses, rosemary, rue, silver ribbons, combined with rosettes of white paper, covered the bands. Inside hung a pair of paper gloves. It was a country custom, a garland for the death of a maiden, the gloves an indication of her maidenhood. In Tamworth Church, such garlands hung from the rafters, some of them years old, rustling like dry leaves, for the young unmarried women who had died.

  The best of the tobacco from First Curle was being made into snuff; the rest had been bought by French and Dutch merchants. She was excited, had visited the London merchant who would make the snuff, to question him, see how and what he did. There was no word yet from Blackstone. She dreamed of fields, of tobacco growing in them. How did her grandmother’s sort do? Next year they would have tobacco from it. She could not wait. Had Blackstone bought indentures? Were any of the slaves freed?

  She’d met the man who was to take Spotswood’s place as deputy governor of Virginia, and dined with the Earl of Orkney, the colony’s true governor, who sent men to govern as his deputies. What a long and wonderful talk they’d had. He said he might visit, but she didn’t believe him. How odd to send someone else to do your task. He would never see the vast bay, the waves rolling in, the dolphins, the savages, the fields, the magnificent trees, the wide rivers, the streams and creeks and fish.

  You must go and inspect in my place, Lady Devane, Orkney had told her. Go there again and tell me how this new man does.

  “Ma’am.”

  It was her mother’s footman, come to tell her that Tommy Carlyle was here. They were going together to the Walpoles’.

  No more rouge, no more wigs for Tommy Carlyle, just a scrubbed face with a mangled nose and scarred forehead, as if he demanded that the world see what had been done to him.

  But the world did not wish to see. No one spoke to him, no one returned his visits. No one sat beside him when he took his seat in the House of Commons. Only she remained his friend.

  Before she was even settled in the carriage, Carlyle said, “You’ll tell Robin?”

  “You know I will.”

  She stared down at the funeral garland. Here was tangible evidence of what brutality accomplished. Tommy was changed, reduced, a ghost of himself. You mustn’t judge, Slane had told her. We all have a breaking point, a point at which we snap, like dry wood, and are no more. Tommy, as she’d known him, was no more. And Wart. He was not arrested, and he did not flee, but fear and the crushing of Jacobite hope took their toll on him.

  Carlyle was looking out the carriage window.

  “Dear God, everywhere one looks these days are these broadsheets on Duncannon. Who is he? I wish I knew. I’d give him over for the reward they’re offering.”

  Under the garland, Barbara gripped her hands together. There was no trusting anyone now. Danger was everywhere. At the first sight of the broadsheets posted on buildings, on fences, she’d run all the way to Slane’s lodging.

  Who told? she demanded.

  Nothing more will be said, he assured her, not answering her question.

  How do you know that? she said. How can you? Are you amused, challenged by the broadsheets?

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sp; He’d taken her hands in his. I am not. I take their position on walls and buildings of London quite seriously. He stayed in England for her and for Gussy. I don’t want Walpole to have him, he said. If I accomplish that, I can live with myself.

  Are you planning a rescue? she demanded. But he wouldn’t answer.

  At the Walpoles’ there were too many people, and they overflowed into the parlors and chambers of the ground floor. Giving their names to a footman, she and Carlyle tried to find some place to sit. A footman came forward and held out a box, in which were dozens of black gloves.

  Tommy took a pair, examined them. “The finest cloth. He spares no expense. I hear he’ll give gold rings to those invited to the funeral tomorrow. I am not invited.”

  Two months ago he would not have cared.

  Barbara had to turn her face away from what he’d become. People smiled at her, nodded their heads, came forward to speak to her. She was allowed her friendship with Carlyle. One false step, said he, any sense that you are falling in favor, and you will not be allowed it. The higher you climb, Barbara, the longer the fall.

  She saw her mother, huge with child in a flowing gown, showing her bosom, and Pendarves jewels over that bosom. Pendarves was nowhere to be seen. Likely her mother had sent him on his way. People crowded around her mother as if she were second-best wife to a sultan, the sultan being Walpole.

  “I finished the book last night,” Diana said when Barbara stood before her. “Moll Flanders, whore, highwayman, thief, liar. A woman after my heart.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “My back aches, my feet ache, my head aches. This child is a stone dragging me down.”

  This child is my brother, thought Barbara. Don’t curse him, Mother.

  “Remember your promise to me, Barbara.”

  “You are not going to die, Mother.”

  “But we die all the time in childbirth, Barbara. We just close our eyes and go, and they marry another who takes our place.”

  “I don’t want to hear this, Mother.”

  It wasn’t like her mother to think of death. She did little these days but lie in bed. Barbara would have been frightened, except that she could not imagine death having the courage to take on Diana. She made Annie read the tea leaves, and Bathsheba, too. Both agreed. Diana would survive.

  Sir Gideon Andreas walked forward, bowed to Barbara and Diana. At once, Diana’s mood changed. She sat up straighter and swept her eyes over the banker, assessing him, making no bones about the fact that she found him interesting.

  You summon the strength to flirt with a man you find attractive, thought Barbara furiously. Now summon the strength to guard my little brother while he is inside you.

  “I hear the tobacco merchants are asking that an act be passed to require planters to leave the stem on tobacco leaves when they’re put into the hogsheads,” Barbara said to Andreas.

  She and Colonel Perry were all over London, she to learn all she could about this end of tobacco farming, he to reacquaint himself. Everything is changed from when I was here before, complained Colonel Perry. The South Sea Bubble has hurt many merchants. They gambled with our credit reserves.

  Andreas’s cool hawk eyes fell over Barbara, considered her, weighed her, assessed her; then, like a hawk, he let a hood fall over them. He smiled politely. “When the stem is taken from the leaves, and only leaves are packed, the planters send fewer hogsheads, Lady Devane.”

  “Since the planters pay for freight and shipping by the hogshead, why should they not send as few hogsheads as possible?”

  “Customs duties are upon the hogshead. Fewer hogsheads mean smaller duties paid to His Majesty’s Treasury. How does your church progress?”

  As if he didn’t know. He was there every morning, riding, as he said, to Marylebone, but stopping always at the church, to look at what Wren was doing, to quiz the workmen, or her grandmother or Colonel Perry if they were there. That man is no simple merchant, said her grandmother. He starts with a little and then takes all, Tommy warned.

  “The body is in the grand parlor, Barbara. Go and see it. They’ll be calling your name to go upstairs soon.—Dear Walpole is so fond of Barbara,” Diana said to Andreas, her marvelous violet eyes flirting with him, once Barbara had moved away to obey.

  “As we all are.”

  “You’ve been so kind, so generous in your handling of the notes. Barbara speaks of it to me all the time, how kind you’ve been.” Diana gave Andreas a look that would have melted ice.

  “But of course. I want to help her with Devane Square. Has she told you that?”

  “We all want to help her,” said Diana. She placed a hand on her bosom, on the huge swell of breast into neck. She watched Andreas’s eyes run over that swell, and she smiled a cat’s smile. There was a long jewel centered in her necklace. She stroked it.

  “You must call upon me some afternoon so that we can talk of Barbara and all her troubles,” she said.

  BARBARA STARED.

  In the grand parlor, Walpole’s daughter lay in state, a huge velvet pall over the coffin, candles burning everywhere; six young women, there to publicly mourn her, sat nearby. Tonight Barbara would return, with Harriet, to sit for a time by the coffin. And tomorrow she would be among the young women who would walk before and behind the coffin, carrying candles and singing.

  She’d never met Robin’s daughter, who had been this past year in Bath, drinking and bathing in the waters there, which were said to restore health. She stared down at the mourning gloves in her hands, thinking of loss: Roger, Harry, Hyacinthe. Was Gussy to be added to the list? And Slane. She must eventually lose him. He must eventually leave England. They had not discussed it, but it was there between them, all the time.

  She started when her name was called. People, many of whom had waited far longer than she, parted for her as she went to be received upstairs. She could hear murmurs, hear her name. She was famous now, a favorite of the King. It was true; the King did like her, did seek out her company. Gossips said other things, too: that she was the King’s mistress; that she was the Prince’s; that the father and son shared her. That, too, was part of her fame, the envy for one rising above others.

  Carlyle stood at the stairs.

  “Tell him,” he said.

  “I will.”

  Upstairs, she walked down a quiet, dark hall in which there was no one but a servant opening a door for her. Robin was alone in this ornate chamber, black cloth over the mirrors, the custom for death, so that no one could look in them. Grief had puffed out his already plump features. Barbara put the garland in his hands, and he stared down at it.

  “How very beautiful. Forgive the absence of my wife. She was overcome and could receive no more company this day. It is she who took the time for her, Barbara, not I. It was she who took our precious girl to the physicians, to the cures and treatments. She feels this deeply.”

  “My servant helped me to make it. I am so sorry for your loss.”

  “It’s a country custom, isn’t it?” He held the garland close to his face, smelled the fragrance of the roses, the herbs, lovely, hauntingly sweet.

  “In Tamworth Church, such garlands hang from the rafters. Some of them are years old. They rustle like dry leaves when there is a breeze,” said Barbara.

  “Rosemary, rue, bittersweet, like her young life. I had such hopes for her.”

  “I thought you might put it in the church where she is buried.”

  “Yes, we’ll do that. Your gesture is kind. How do you do, yourself?”

  Devane Square rises; I rise; my love is a Jacobite and must leave London; my dearest friend is heartbroken; snuff is being made from First Curle tobacco; Wart drinks too much; Carlyle no longer exists; my treasured servant, Thérèse, leaves me; I begin to like Harriet very much, but I don’t like Tony, not anymore. Restlessly, she touched Hyacinthe’s collar, at her neck, tied tight with ribbon, worn today, worn nearly every day, in memory of the boy who was more than a servant, was part of the family she�
��d made for herself. Could Odell Smith have killed him? Was it possible for men to be so base? Thérèse, like Barbara, had wept at the sight of the collar. The sight of it shook her faith in his being alive. Thérèse…Barbara walked to a table piled high with papers, glanced at them. Were they about the plot? Was Gussy here, living in these papers?

  “Well enough. Robin, I want to ask a favor of you.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “It’s Tommy Carlyle. He’s below, waiting. He came this morning and waited also. Please receive him. Allow him to express his condolences to you. He is sincere in them. A gesture from you would mean so much at this low point in his life. Think of all the years when you were friends, rather than of this last one, when you have not been. He asks that I tell you that he begs your pardon for all he has done, he swears he will do no more.”

  “Can do no more, you mean. I’ll think on it. Your mother tells me you’re giving Thérèse to the Princess of Wales’s household in the next week.”

  You’re not going to receive him, thought Barbara. Yes, I give Thérèse over, and not happily.

  “Wise of you, Barbara, very wise. I’m pleased to see you can be so amenable. You try to mend old breaches of trust, I hear, try to encourage the King and the Prince to understand each other. The Jacobites among us would not be pleased. They like it when the King and the Prince of Wales quarrel. You’re happy at court? Happy with your duties? Good. Good. The King called on me this morning, along with the Duchess of Kendall. Their kindnesses to me, to my wife, during this time have been most flattering.”

  He spread out his favor like a peacock’s tail, but it was far from certain he would keep it. He wouldn’t keep it if he couldn’t try Rochester. In the King’s mind, Rochester was the head of the plot. In the King’s mind, Rochester must be punished.

  She was in the King’s household now. She knew.

  “You resemble the roses in this garland, Barbara, fresh and somehow pure. It eases me to know there is someone among those around me I may trust.”