Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  Her mother was even now secretly selling everything—plate, pots, jewelry, clothing—so that they would have funds to pay the captain of the ship on which they sailed. She was on her way to see the Duke of Tamworth to borrow a hundred pounds from him. He’d give it without asking a question as to what she wished it for. Barbara had already sent fifty pounds, would send more. Jane needed two women to help her, for her mother was going to have the children on her hands.

  Who could help her?

  Who would be safe in risking it?

  ANNIE, IN the kitchen at Saylor House, read once again the note Barbara had sent.

  “What are you up to, Annie my love?” said Tim.

  Annie looked away from Tim’s impudent face. She’d just done tea leaves. It was in the tea leaves, all of it. Even Tim.

  “I WILL not have it,” Sir John Ashford said, silencing even guests at the other end of the chamber. “You are to keep your meddling hands out of my affairs once and for all.”

  Lord Cowper moved quickly away from the guest he was talking to, toward John Ashford and the Duchess of Tamworth. Ashford was making a scene, accosting the Duchess as if she were a yard woman.

  “I know all about it,” Sir John was saying as people around them murmured to one another and watched. “You’ve asked to buy Ladybeth from Andreas, don’t bother to deny it. You always wanted it, didn’t you? Greedy woman.”

  “No,” said the Duchess. “You know that is not true.”

  Lord Cowper was just able to keep Tony from putting his hands on Sir John. As it was, Tony followed Cowper and Sir John down the stairs, Cowper whispering to this man, an old friend, but a friend who had gone too far, “You forget yourself, John. You must leave my house at once.”

  Tony pushed past Cowper and took Sir John by the arm. “You are never to speak to my grandmother in such a manner again.”

  Sir John pulled away. “Will you duel with me? Or call me thief? Young Whig rogue. I spit on you and every Saylor I know.”

  Lord Cowper stepped in front of Tony. “I beg you, simply allow him to depart. Remember all that has befallen him—”

  Upstairs, Barbara stood by her grandmother. Annie had gone for their cloaks. Her grandmother was silent, but her face was too pale and her hands were clenching and unclenching her cane.

  “He didn’t mean it,” Barbara said softly. “It is the strain of everything. Did you offer to buy the farm from Andreas?”

  “Yes, but to give it back to John, not right away, but in time. When you’re grieving you need the familiar, that which you know, to comfort you. He won’t survive all this without his farm.”

  A tear seeped down the Duchess’s cheek. Death, she thought, I am ready.

  “IT BROKE my mother’s heart,” said Diana to Walpole, who visited her. “She has given Sir John nothing but faithful friendship in this time. I never liked him.”

  “Shall I put him in the Tower for you?”

  “No, let it be. You’re going to lower the fine, yes?”

  “Yes. It will be our last piece of business in Parliament before we all leave for Christmas. If anything, Diana, Barbara may be more in favor with the King than ever. ‘She is a true friend,’ he says, ‘That is rare.’ I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” said Diana.

  “DON’T GRIEVE,” said Barbara, patting the Duchess’s hand. “Please don’t grieve. Sir John will send an apology. I know it. Let time pass.”

  Whig and Tory matter no more to me, thought the Duchess. George or James—it matters not. Oil of violets: If she were at Tamworth, Annie would be making oil of violets, violets’ leaves boiled, steeped, strained, put into a glass with fresh leaves and left alone for a time, good against melancholy, dullness, and heaviness of spirit.

  John, you have broken my heart.

  COLONEL PERRY found Barbara walking around the centermost portion of Devane Square, where her Virginia garden was to be. He got down from his horse.

  “I’ve found out about a ship to Virginia, as you asked.”

  “Thank you.”

  He cocked his head and watched her as she moved along the long lines of string Wren had stretched from wooden stakes to show the shape of the garden. He was dreaming of her. The angel was there again, telling him to watch over her, carefully.

  “How can I help you?” he said. He knew nothing else to say.

  “Be my friend,” said Barbara. “Walk with me as I see this garden in my mind. Assure me that Walpole really will reduce my fine. And pray for Jane.”

  “I do nothing else. I pray that that which is best for all, that which is good and loving, happens.”

  “Yes.”

  FIVE DAYS. Annie walked down the street where Mrs. Cromwell rented a chamber in a building. She knocked upon a door at the top of the stairs. Jane opened it.

  “I want to help you,” Annie heard herself say.

  Jane’s face became closed, guarded. “Help me?”

  “Take him from the Tower.”

  “How can you know that! How?” And when Annie didn’t answer: “I need two women. Can you find women who will go to the Tower with me? All they have to do is to bring in clothing for him to wear out. I’ll give them each twenty pounds.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She will have to be with the children. The children would behave for no one else, except Barbara.”

  “I’ve brought green tea and two eggs. We’ll let the tea steep, then beat in the yolks with white sugar. For strength. Tell me your plan.”

  FOUR DAYS. Annie folded gowns. Where to find another woman? She herself would be the first. She saw the Duchess watching her and coughed.

  The Duchess pursed her lips. “I don’t like that cough. Are you becoming ill?”

  “I am never ill.” Annie coughed again, put the gown down, and left the chamber. Tim caught her in the servants’ hall and backed her into a corner.

  “Tell me.”

  She looked him up and down, her face expressionless. “Mrs. Cromwell is going to take Mr. Cromwell from the Tower in four days.”

  Tim stepped back, as if a snake had bitten him. “An—”

  “Escape.” Annie moved around him, toward the cavernous kitchen, where the kitchen servants were kneading dough, cutting up potatoes, unaware of the drama unfolding yards away from them. Tim caught her by the arm, pulled her back into the corner.

  “Does the Duchess know?”

  “It isn’t meant for her to know.”

  “Are you—”

  “Leave me be. I’ve told you more than I should.”

  THREE DAYS. Annie sat by a window, watching a bird peck among the gravel on the garden paths. Another woman? Jane had asked, desperately. Trust, said Annie. Are you well? Drink the tea.

  Down the gravel path came Tim, no grin on that impudent face of his. What is wrong with Tim? one of the maidservants had asked just this morning. I have never known him to scowl so. Annie closed her eyes, waited, patiently. After a time, someone’s hand touched her shoulder. Tim knelt down close to her, his face, for once, serious.

  How many women love you? thought Annie. A dozen, at least.

  “I want to help. I can’t think of anything else but little Mrs. Cromwell. Wood violet, the Duchess calls her, Tamworth’s wood violet. Let me help, Annie. Please.”

  “I need a woman to go to the Tower with us, a woman who will wear an extra gown over her own. She has only to do that and then disappear. We’ve money for her. Do you know someone who doesn’t mind seeing the last of London once she’s done?”

  Tim nodded. Annie had known he would.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “Someone to drive a carriage or cart. Sir John will drive one, the one with Gussy in it. Someone needs to drive another, with Jane and myself.”

  “Done.”

  “This is no game, footman.”

  He stood, looked down at her, impudent, bold, tall. No wonder the Duchess adores him, thought Annie. If I had a heart, I might, too.

  “The D
uchess will miss us.”

  “Leave that to me.”

  “Tim has a sweetheart,” Annie said later to the Duchess. “He’s been scowling like a singed cat in the kitchen for days. A lover’s quarrel, the cook thinks.” Annie coughed.

  “I don’t like the sound of that. Go and rest.”

  “I am fine.”

  “You are not. You are getting ill. I won’t have it.”

  “I am fine. You fret like an old hen over her one chick.”

  “Bah. Go ahead and be ill. Little I care. No one listens to me anyway.”

  THREE DAYS.

  “Well, now,” Jane said, to the turnkey in the wardroom that led to Gussy’s cell, “I have wonderful news. The King is going to accept my petition for mercy tomorrow night. I think that my husband will not die after all.”

  Jane smiled and handed the turnkey a small sack of coins.

  “You and the other gentlemen here drink a toast to that. Will you?”

  “God bless you, Mrs. Cromwell, that we will, with all our hearts.”

  She followed the turnkey up the short twisting staircase, and at its top, he unlocked the door of Gussy’s cell. She and Gussy sat together on the bed.

  “Tomorrow afternoon. Annie helps, and a woman Tim found.”

  “What woman?”

  “A woman of the streets, who will be given enough to disappear from London. Tomorrow,” whispered Jane, “my mother takes the children to Gravesend.” Ships sailed from Gravesend, a village east of London. Barbara had sent word of a ship.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Visitors,” said the turnkey.

  Jane went down the stairs, passing through the wardroom, where guards and their wives and children were gathered at one end by the fire, as was their habit. It was what had given her the idea in the first place: The guards paid more attention to their families than who came in and out. They expected nothing of her. No one did. She was too meek and quiet.

  “God bless you,” one of them called. “We’ll drink to your husband’s good fortune tomorrow.”

  Outside the wardroom was a long flight of stairs, at the end of which stood friends of Gussy, men he’d gone to school with.

  “They allow only two inside his cell,” she said to them. “So I may not go with you.”

  Later, going up the stairs to be with Gussy once his visit with his friends was ended, Jane paused a moment. She felt odd, had been feeling so since yesterday. She shook her head and walked into the cell. This was her last night with Gussy, if her plan failed. They lay together on the bed, holding each other, for hours.

  Winter

  …charity, these three

  Chapter Sixty

  DECEMBER MOVED ON FROSTY FEET TOWARD THE BIRTH OF the Christ….

  The day.

  “Drunk as ever I’ve seen him, over that sweetheart of his,” said Annie. She put her hand to her head. “When he shows himself again, you’ll need to punish him.”

  “Fever,” said the Duchess. “Have you a fever? Does your head ache? I knew it. Go to bed.”

  “I am fine.”

  “You are ill.”

  THE DAY.

  The children were gone with Jane’s mother to Gravesend. This is the last day of my old life, thought Jane. Farewell, Barbara.

  BARBARA SAT in Walpole’s office, a tiny cubicle near the chamber in which the House of Commons met. She could hear the shouting from where she sat. Roger’s fine was the subject, and it was as if an unhealed wound had been touched, men shouting and bellowing about the South Sea Bubble, the trickery and treachery of His Majesty’s ministers and stock jobbers.

  The Tories had jumped on the question, and for two days now there had been long speeches and much posturing. All the old feeling against Walpole was up; Skreen, he was being called to his face and in the venomous little broadsheets. He’d chosen his time well, though, for many of the members were absent, already out of London, gone to their country homes for the season. Robin, thought Barbara, do you never misstep? What was happening with Jane? She did not know.

  She heard a great shout. Today would be the vote, Robin told her. She went to the door, looked down the hall. What did it mean? The shouting continued, and then men were streaming from the chamber out into the lobby. She saw Wart and Tony, who had been watching the proceedings in the Commons since they began. A tall man beside Wart turned, and it was the Prince de Soissons.

  Barbara became wary instantly. Philippe. He bowed to her.

  When did you return? she thought, and then was distracted by Robin, coming out of the chamber, his face red. She walked to him.

  “What I’ve put up with,” he said to her, taking her hands, “you cannot imagine. The things said of me.” And then, with a smile, “It’s done. The fine is relented entirely.”

  Like that, one hundred thousand pounds of debt disappeared. She felt like fainting.

  “Thank you, Robin.”

  He was leaving soon, to go to his country home, taking the boxes and boxes of notes about Rochester and the invasion, to see how he might proceed against a bishop. They were going to doom the Bishop to exile. His Majesty was pleased. He’d have rather had a headless body, but exile would do. Jane, thought Barbara, how do you do?

  “Go and see my mother before you leave town, Robin.”

  “You’re fretted for her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Now here was Tony, a smile on his grave face.

  “It’s done,” she said. “Walk me to my carriage, cousin.”

  Outside, as they waited for her carriage to be brought forward, someone called her name. She turned; there was Wart, and with him was Philippe.

  “We wanted to congratulate you,” Wart said. “Everyone who knows you is glad, Bab.”

  “I congratulate you, Barbara,” Philippe said. “You have risen, like a phoenix, from ashes.”

  Which you did not expect, thought Barbara, and did not want.

  Her carriage was here. Philippe held open the door for her before Tony could. She climbed inside without touching the hand he held out to help her.

  “I will call upon you very soon,” he said.

  The carriage pulled away.

  WHARTON AND Philippe walked down the street. Philippe stopped to buy a sprig of Christmas holly from a street vendor’s basket. Carefully, fastidiously, he pushed it into his buttonhole, surveyed the scene before him: carriages and sedans, clerks from Whitehall walking to coffeehouses and taverns, someone selling fresh water to drink, someone selling herbs to bring good fortune.

  “A pity she isn’t a Jacobite,” he said. “We must make her one.”

  IN THE carriage, Barbara felt numb. I’ve done it, she thought. I’ve survived Roger’s debacle, triumphed over it. She closed her eyes, began to tremble. Someday, she thought, someday soon, I must grieve over all I’ve lost in this, but not today. Today I want to walk around Devane Square and say to myself, I’ve done it. I want to send love and blessings to Jane. Jane.

  IN HER mind, Jane rehearsed the plan. This afternoon, she would bring friends yet again to see Gussy, as the guards had seen her do these last weeks. But this day Gussy would leave as one of them, if the guards and God allowed it. There was the carriage. Tim sat atop it. He grinned his broken-toothed grin at her, nodding his head. Dear Tim. Dear Annie. Their presence gave her strength, made her think she might succeed. There was no way ever, ever to repay them. Her father would try to give them coins, but Jane doubted they would take them. They did this for love of Tamworth and the Duchess and Ladybeth, all that they knew. They did it for love.

  Inside the carriage, Jane said to the woman, “You understand everything? You are to go up to his cell with me, first.”

  Jane put her hand to her back, which was aching. Was it the child?

  “What is it?” said Annie, sitting grim and sober beside the woman.

  “Nothing; a little pain.”

  Tim pulled the carriage into the yard beside the
Tower. Jane watched as he drove it back outside the gates. There was every possibility she would never see the other side of these walls again.

  She and Annie and the woman walked across the yard, through the arch of Martin’s Tower, under which was a bridge that crossed the moat. The afternoon was leaden, clouds like gray pillows. I am mad, thought Jane, completely mad to be doing this. It isn’t going to work. They walked through yet another archway of yet another tower, down the path toward the entrance to all that was behind the walls, massive, thick walls.

  My plan is too simple, thought Jane. I am a fool.

  It was dark inside this last archway, an archway that would put them in the heart of all that was the Tower of London, like a small town behind its massive walls. The Tower held more buildings than Williamsburg, Barbara had said.

  Jane stood a moment in the open space, breathing in air. I must not fail, she thought. I must be brave. But Barbara was the brave one, not she. Someone must stop this now, she thought, but who?

  There, ahead, was the tower in which Gussy was jailed. Leaving Annie in the downstairs chamber, Jane walked with the woman up the stairs to the wardroom, and just before opening its door, took a deep breath that she felt all the way to her womb. Cramps in her womb. Something was happening. Annie knew. Courage.

  She took Tim’s woman by the hand and marched her into the wardroom, talking as fast as ever she had.

  “I am to see the King tonight,” she said to the woman, knowing the guards clustered by the fire would hear. “I am so beside myself I can hardly think. Where is the turnkey? Hurry, and open the door of my husband’s cell.”

  Following the turnkey up the twisting stairs, Jane talked all the while, her heart pounding so hard she didn’t know how her voice sounded over it.