Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  “Allow Augustus Cromwell to receive a visit from his wife, a single visit, nothing more.”

  He laughed, genuinely amused.

  “Two requests within the space of moments. You’ve become a true creature of court, Barbara.”

  “It is so little, and would mean so much. She’s my dearest friend—”

  Walpole held up a hand, and Barbara was silent.

  “As we all know. Not even for you will I do that, nor could I do that if I wished it. It is the King’s will that there be no visitors.”

  Your will, thought Barbara. He’s given the handling of this plot to you. Walpole’s as tenacious as an old hunting dog, the King had told her. He will find Jacobites. He’d better.

  “This is not a matter of friendship, but one of state, of treason, which you mustn’t bother your pretty head with.”

  She wanted to strike him. They were speaking of life and death, as well as treason. They were speaking of policy, of survival—his and Gussy’s. You’ll sacrifice Gussy the way you did Roger, thought Barbara, and far more easily, for Gussy is nothing to you but fodder to feed the crowd’s bloodlust for Jacobites that you foster, the King’s bloodlust. I don’t like this, thought Barbara. I don’t like any of it the way I thought I would.

  In the carriage, Carlyle said, “I will buy a jewel for the Duchess of Kendall. You will give her the jewel, Bab; ask her to see that I’m given an interview with the King. Tell her there will be another jewel if I am. An interview with the King will restore me. I know it.”

  Walpole’s cruelty has broken Tommy, thought Barbara, and I am reminded of Harry, and I don’t know why, but I feel afraid, for Tommy and for myself.

  WALPOLE TOLD his footman to bring up no callers for a time. He stared at the papers piled upon a table, papers that even the death of his daughter did not distract him from, papers he sifted through again and again, looking for the path that would lead him to what he wished. Even during the King’s call of condolence today, Rochester’s name had come up.

  He has used the Church all these years as the platform from which to attack me, said the King. He has used his vestments to cover treason for who knows how long. It must be stopped. The enemies of my house must be crushed.

  Despite Philip Neyoe, despite Christopher Layer, there was not the direct and definite evidence of treason necessary to prosecute in a court of common law. There was only hearsay. He had yet to tell the King.

  The fickle, changing bitch that was opinion had begun to shift. The sight of Jane Cromwell, dragging most of her children with her from drawing room to drawing room—including his own, this morning—telling anyone who would listen of her husband’s innocence and virtues, did no good. It made him look like a tyrant, an ogre. He tried to quell the power of the Church of England; he was godless and immoral, rumor said.

  I cannot win if they pit me against God, said the King. You must prove that Rochester has acted in an ungodly manner, plotting against his King and country.

  Had he taken himself too far out, promised what he could not deliver? He was going to try Christopher Layer and Augustus Cromwell. He could prove their guilt. But the King wanted more.

  Just this one head, thought Walpole, staring down at the papers, on Traitor’s Gate, and I am where I wish to be. But I cannot convict that head. The Bishop and his adherents are yet wilier than I.

  It was all he thought of. When the news of his daughter’s death had come, he’d thought: Good, a few days’ respite from the King’s questions about my progress. His wife had been disgusted with him.

  There was a knock upon the door. A servant entered with a single white rose.

  Walpole read the note attached, and said, cordially, “Who gave you this?”

  “The downstairs footman, sir.”

  “Send him to me at once. At once, do you hear.”

  He knew, even as he gave the order, that the footman would be able to tell him nothing.

  “My sincere condolences,” the note said, and it was signed “Duncannon.” The white rose was the flower of the House of Stuart. Duncannon trifled with him. What was it Barbara had told them stories of? The savages counting coup. Duncannon counted coup, against him, and won. What sums he’d spent trying to find him. What time questioning others. He wanted this Duncannon almost as much as he wanted Rochester. He would see the reward on Duncannon doubled tomorrow. I so enjoyed the chase of you, your élan, he would say, right before the axman beheaded him.

  Spies and goslings.

  Into his mind came the names of young noblemen suspected and discarded for lack of evidence: the Duke of Wharton, Philip Stanhope, others. If Barbara’s brother Harry had been alive, his name would have led the list. A child of Diana’s was capable of anything. He set the rose down beside the garland Barbara had brought, made with her own hands, she said, a garland with white roses in it, white for maidenhood.

  Or for Stuart.

  He remained where he was, staring at the garland. What if the gosling was not, as they supposed, a man, but a woman? A woman whose brother and father were Jacobites, a woman who had been received by King James in Rome, a woman who, according to his notes, had dined with every Jacobite in Italy. A woman who was now in the royal household and, on the strength of her charm and wits, rapidly rising. She reads aloud to the King in the evenings, the Duchess of Kendall had confided the other day, and the Duchess of Kendall did not even like Walpole. He says he likes the sound of her voice.

  What does she read to him?

  Robinson Crusoe.

  Walpole’s heart beat faster.

  If he could give the King a gosling in the place of Rochester, that might do. Did you ruin my daughter for your ambition? Diana had asked him. If you did, I will cut your heart out and eat it. But their coming child distracted her. Robin, you are disgusting, his wife had said. Is nothing sacred to you but your ambition?

  No, not really. Nothing. No one.

  It was sad but true.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  PENDARVES AND BARBARA WALKED THROUGH A TOWNHOUSE IN Devane Square. All of the wonderful interior molding upon the walls, around the doors, around the ceiling—the cascades of wooden flowers, shells, violins, musical notes, children playing—was gone. So were the chandeliers, which had been of silver. The wall sconces had been silver, Roger at his extravagant best. Above her remained the glorious scenes painted upon the ceiling, gods and goddesses floating upon clouds. There’d been no way to remove the paintings whole, or else Parliament would have done it when Roger was fined for his part in the South Sea. The chamber they were in was light-filled, windows all along its three outside walls.

  “I thought to have everything finished simply,” she said, “as they do it in Virginia. Plain panels of wood inset in the walls, rather than ornate carving. All the chambers painted the palest of greens and blues. That will save expense.” She would live here soon. Pendarves was paying for the finishing of this.

  Pendarves pointed, and she saw out a window that Andreas was dismounting, going into the church.

  “What do you think he will do when he knows?” she asked.

  “One of two things. Demand at once that you repay the notes you owe him—”

  “Which I cannot.”

  “Or demand that he be allowed to build here, as I’m doing. You haven’t answered about the ground lease for these townhouses.”

  “I won’t give away the ground lease. It remains mine. By my figuring, you’ll be paid back what you’ve spent, including interest, from rents before five years are passed, so I will give you all the rents for six.” He wouldn’t own these three townhouses, but he was building more, and those he would own. She had the land they sat upon, however, and he’d have to pay her rent for that.

  He considered what she said, then slapped at the window ledge, chortling, clearly pleased. Papers were ready, papers that gave him the right to finish this row of townhouses, to lease them in his name, to build more.

  “I’ll have you in here by Christmas, Bab.”<
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  The townhouses would lease faster with her living in one. She was in fashion, and her stepfather, no fool, wished to use the fact. That was all right. She understood. It was to her advantage, too. Tomorrow, the King drove out in his carriage, with his nieces, his granddaughters, to view the church, to walk the square. Wren was excited.

  A church bell tolled in Marylebone, announcing the hour. On the last ring, she and Pendarves went outside, and she saw Bathsheba walking down the lane. Loyal Bathsheba, come to fetch her, so that she would not be late.

  Why take a half-wild Gypsy as your maidservant? her mother had asked.

  Why not? Barbara answered.

  Tim carried her grandmother out of the church, Colonel Perry beside her, Wren and Andreas following. The coachman brought forward the carriage that would take them to Diana’s townhouse.

  “We’re going to make a Virginia garden in the square,” Wren said to Andreas.

  Barbara sighed. Wren was just no good at secrets. At once, Pendarves scuttled into the carriage, but her grandmother and Colonel Perry remained where they were.

  “Are you?” Andreas was looking at her, trying to read her, she could see.

  “Yes. I want lilacs, which are my colonial friend Major Custis’s favorite, and wild pansies, which have markings like a slave’s scars.”

  “A fountain in the middle, I thought,” said Wren. “Trite, I know, but people do love water. And hyacinths, Lady Devane, tell him of the hyacinths. Dozens and dozens of hyacinths,” he said, not able to contain his delight, “blooming everywhere, in honor of the servant boy. The trees all from Virginia; vines; perhaps the garden a little wild, I thought—daring, I know, not done, not formal, but it’s time I stretched myself to something different.”

  “Quite an undertaking,” said Andreas, “and an expense.”

  “A dream at this point. We’re nothing but a quartet of old dreamers,” said the Duchess. She was putting money into the square. “Excuse us, but we really must leave.”

  “You go to Leicester House?”

  “Yes,” said Barbara.

  “And tomorrow His Majesty calls?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hear you are collecting for vagabond children.” Andreas smiled at Perry, the smile not reaching his eyes.

  “He is,” said Wren. “He will go walking in the worst of London, and so he sees our dregs. He says they live like wild dogs among the warehouses at London Bridge. He wants me to design a shelter for them.”

  “You may put me down for two hundred and fifty pounds,” said Andreas.

  “You’re not to tell Wren a word of your plan of the townhouses,” the Duchess said to Pendarves, very sternly, once the carriage was driving away. “He’ll begin to talk of design and forget that we wish to keep this secret.”

  “What do you think Andreas will do when he knows about Pendarves’s lease?” Colonel Perry asked her.

  “He’ll want me to pay the notes he holds, but I’ll go to the King and cry, and since he also wants the King’s favor, wants to be made an earl, he’ll have to be gentle.” Barbara’s tone was more flippant than she felt.

  “I hope it’s as easy as that,” snapped her grandmother.

  Such an odd feeling I had, thought Barbara, standing there, talking with Andreas and Wren, that I won’t see the Virginia garden made. The slaves’ song for the dead was in her mind, but it was lost in the carriage stopping, and her rush to go upstairs to her bedchamber and change her gown. Thérèse was there to help, but Barbara, still angry, still unforgiving, stopped her. Today she was to present Thérèse to the Princess of Wales at Leicester House. The last of her family, save her dog, was gone.

  “Bathsheba is my maidservant now.”

  Those fern-frond eyes of Bathsheba’s flicked once at Barbara as Bathsheba handed her a gown. Sweet Jesus, thought Barbara, have I taken on an Annie?

  “Wait for me downstairs,” Barbara said to Thérèse.

  “Yes, madame.”

  “I didn’t want to weep before her,” she said to Bathsheba the moment the door was closed behind Thérèse, “not that it is your place to have to know that. I don’t wish her to leave. I regret being talked into this. I will miss her. You’re not to lecture me with looks and glances. I won’t have it. I receive enough lectures from my grandmother and Annie. All right. Now, did Caesar White find the cradle yet?”

  Caesar and Montrose were searching in the warehouse for a lovely cradle Roger had had made for his hope of their child, not knowing there would be no children. She’d never told him she was barren. It was going in the kitchen, for Bathsheba’s boy.

  Bathsheba shook her head.

  “Where’s your child?”

  Bathsheba didn’t answer, kept her face empty, an emptiness that always touched Barbara’s heart.

  “My mother told you to keep him in the kitchen, out of my way, didn’t she? Never mind her. You bring him with you when you come to dress me, when you do your work for me. No feathers today.”

  Everyone was wearing them now. Herbs, thought Barbara, Bathsheba knows herbs and flowers, and when spring comes, I’ll have her twine them all in my hair. Perhaps we’ll twine them into a necklace for me to wear. Herbs in the tobacco—she turned slowly, so that Bathsheba could straighten frills and ribbons, pull out and fluff lace—there’s an idea. The snuff from First Curle tobacco was going to be presented to His Majesty as her grandmother’s New Year’s gift.

  Outside, in the hall, Harry barked at her, then ran down the stairs. He’d run to Thérèse, then back to her—a habit of his, to run himself to nothing between them. She had to stop a moment. She touched the collar at her neck. Her household, the family she’d made for herself, was undone now. Thérèse had read Tommy’s letter, asked to go into service in the Princess’s household. No, said Barbara. Yes, said Colonel Perry; her desire to move to the Princess’s household has nothing to do with you nor her regard for you. She has her own dreams, which you must allow. She’s my family, said Barbara, the family I made when Roger and I could not make one. Everyone is leaving—Harry is gone, and Hyacinthe and Charlotte, now Thérèse. It hurts me. I feel left alone. I feel afraid. Another family will come to you, said Colonel Perry, in time. Allow Thérèse her dreams. We must never interfere in another’s hopes. It is hard for me to let go, Barbara told him, particularly of those I love. All the more reason to learn, he replied.

  The dead are in the child who is wailing, in the firebrand that flames, in the fire that is dying. The dead are not dead, so the slaves sang.

  A dozen memories swirled in Barbara’s mind: Thérèse and Hyacinthe; the dogs and her brother in the garden in France, in a gondola in Venice, on a cypress-wooded terrace. Make me beautiful, she’d said to Thérèse, for Roger. Roger, she thought, Devane Square begins to rise again. But my heart isn’t in it the way I thought it would be.

  IN THE bedchamber, Bathsheba carefully smoothed the riding habit Barbara had stepped out of, opened a little bag at her waist, and sprinkled lavender and geranium in the folds. So much to learn. Thérèse at her, Annie at her, with all the things she must learn. The mistress of this house had violet eyes that looked coldly upon her. The other servants sneered. Gypsy, they said. Witch.

  A cradle for the child, Lady Devane had said, a lovely cradle with cherubs carved upon it to watch him as he sleeps.

  I can’t bear to see your idiot, Violet Eyes said. Keep him out of my sight or I’ll have him put in with the horses.

  We’ll live in the townhouse, Lady Devane said, and you will have the kitchen and the chamber beside it all for your own. You will be housekeeper and servant to me, Bathsheba. Can you do that? I think you can. When your child grows large, we can teach him to be a stable boy. I think he will like the horses. I think he will do well with them.

  A whole chamber; a cradle for her son, who would be a stable boy. Bathsheba pressed in lavender, geranium with nimble fingers, long and clever fingers. It might have been love and good fortune she was pressing in. It probably was.

>   DOWNSTAIRS, THE Duchess was lecturing Thérèse.

  “You remember whom you began with. You remain hers even if you do go to them. She has been good to you, better than you deserve.”

  “As Mademoiselle Fuseau well knows,” Colonel Perry deftly steered Thérèse to Barbara, who had just stepped into the chamber.

  “Tommy Carlyle is not here yet,” said the Duchess.

  “We must wait, then.”

  “You cannot, and you know it. The Princess will be offended.”

  “Everything I do offends her,” said Barbara. If the Princess felt gratitude, she was not showing it. The great are monsters who must be forever fed, cannot stay full, Carlyle had told her. One day, if you stay among them long enough, you’ll be like them, too.

  No, she’d said.

  Yes, said Carlyle. No one escapes.

  “Nonetheless, go on,” said the Duchess. “We’ll send him on if he arrives here. Likely he is already at Leicester House, proclaiming to one and all how clever he is, how he has arranged all this.”

  “He did arrange all this.”

  “You’re too softhearted.”

  “He’ll ask about the jewel,” said Barbara. “I’ve given it to the Duchess of Kendall, but she has not said anything yet.”

  “Tell him that,” said the Duchess. “He won’t like it, but there it is.”

  “What is that?” Barbara pointed to a hat Thérèse had crushed in one hand.

  It was one of Hyacinthe’s.

  “Never mind,” Barbara said. “I know whose hat it is. Come, Thérèse, we must leave.”

  Thérèse went from one to another, very quiet, very pale. She feels this, too, thought Barbara. Oh, Thérèse, I never thought we’d part. Depend upon nothing but change, said Colonel Perry. It is the very nature of life. Barbara saw Pendarves press some coins into Thérèse’s hands. She smiled to herself. She was always finding coins in the pocket of her gown or in some chamber to which Pendarves knew she’d go. Debt fairies leave them, he said. He was far too kind to survive living with her mother.