by M. C. Beaton
By George! The lad could play like an angel!
The pale gold light of the setting sun slanted through the long French windows that led onto the terrace.
The drawing room had not been used much since the earl’s mother’s death. Glass cases still held her treasured collection of Chinese carvings in jade and rock crystal, French and English enameled snuffboxes, Russian bright niello work, and silver mugs. A full-length portrait of his mother hung above the fireplace, her eyes seeming to look down on the bright head of the boy bent over the keyboard.
Birds sang their evening song outside, and a breath of clean, warm, sweet air from the gardens moved the long Brussels lace curtains and sent them billowing out.
At last Freddie stopped, his thin, sensitive fingers resting on the keyboard.
The earl stared at the boy’s bent head, inexpressibly moved by the beauty of the music, slightly in awe of this slim youth who could conjure up such magic.
He cleared his throat. He said brusquely, “Very good, my boy. You must play for Lady Rennenord.”
“No!” said Freddie passionately, whirling about. “No, I will not!” His blue eyes were blazing in his white face.
The earl stood up. The obvious and correct thing to do was to fetch his riding crop and thrash Freddie for a piece of unpardonable insolence. Any of his peers would have done so without the slightest qualm. But he immediately knew he could not raise a hand to the boy, and this brought with it a feeling of impotence and rage.
“How dare you, you unpleasant, ill-mannered whelp!” he raged. “Lady Rennenord may shortly become my wife, and you will show her all due civility while you are under my roof!”
The earl looked awful in his rage, black eyes flashing, mouth set in a tight line.
Freddie ran forward and fell to his knees in front of him.
“Oh, I am sorry, my lord,” he whispered. “I would not offend you for the world.”
He raised blue, beseeching eyes to the earl’s black, stormy ones.
The earl looked down at the boy curiously, his own eyes turning guarded, watchful and wary.
“What a pretty picture!” cried Lady Rennenord, sweeping through the French windows with Mrs. Bellisle close behind. “Do not be too hard on Master Frederick. These lads will lie so.”
“His tutor was drunk,” said the earl harshly. “He did not lie. Go to your room, Frederick, and wait until I call you.”
Freddie rushed from the drawing room, slamming the door noisily behind him.
“Where did your brother find Captain Cramble?” asked the earl.
Lady Rennenord looked at him in pretty puzzlement. “I confess I do not know. Is he not satisfactory? I feel a great deal of responsibility for him. I trust I have not brought some unsuitable person into your household.”
“Perhaps I am too harsh,” said the earl, but his smile was abstracted, and a crease of worry was between his brows.
To Lady Rennenord’s well-concealed irritation, his lordship’s strange abstraction continued throughout the rest of her visit.
“Where are we going?” demanded Freddie the next day. He was seated up in a gig beside his tutor, who was driving.
“Going to let you see a bit of excitement,” said the captain, winking broadly. “Don’t ask any questions. Spoil the surprise.”
Freddie relapsed into a brooding silence. He had much to brood about. He had not been summoned to supper. A tray had been sent to him in his room.
Feeling he was going against orders, he had ventured downstairs in the morning, only to find that his guardian had left for the day. It was then that the captain had appeared, in high spirits, chuckling secretively over a promised treat which would “make Master Frederick stare.”
The day was blustery and cold, with great gray and white clouds scudding across the sky. Winter had returned, and the long grass beside the road gleamed with unmelted frost.
Freddie felt very young and silly. Who was he to try to stop such a magnificent figure as the earl from proposing marriage to a respectable lady of good breeding? No doubt he was already down on one knee, begging for her hand in marriage. But after some thought, Freddie came to the conclusion that the earl was not the sort of man to bend his knee before anyone.
At least this expedition would pass some of the wearisome day, and with any luck, by the time evening fell, by some miracle the earl would still be a free man.
A flock of rooks sailed before the icy wind over the hard brown fields, and Freddie shivered as the gig jolted and rumbled along the country roads.
They had gone some distance when he espied the tall steeple of a church rising above the fields and, as they drew nearer, a cluster of houses.
A few more miles and Freddie realized they were approaching a biggish town.
“Where is this?” asked Freddie.
“Hardcaster,” said his tutor. “Nearly there.”
They rumbled through the cobbled streets of the town and drove into the yard of an inn called the Hare and Hounds.
The captain tossed a coin to an ostler. After they had climbed down and their gig was being led off to the stables, he tucked Freddie’s slim arm in his own and led him out of the inn yard. “Time enough for a celebration when the fun is over,” said the captain.
“Where are we going?” asked Freddie plaintively, horrified visions of seedy brothels beginning to dance before his eyes.
“Here!” said the captain triumphantly, coming to a halt before a peculiarly round-shaped building.
Freddie looked, and his heart sank to the worn soles of his patched boots.
“Does… does my lord know you are taking me to such a place?” he asked with a tremor in his voice.
“Course he does,” said the captain heartily.
“‘Take him about. Let him enjoy the things men enjoy.’ That’s what his lordship said.”
Numbly, Freddie allowed himself to be led into the building.
It was a cockpit. The building was round, like a tower. Inside, it resembled the setting for an anatomy lecture. All around, the benches rose in tiers. In the middle was a round table on which the cocks had to fight.
To Freddie’s increasing dismay, the captain had secured them places at the very front. Already the air seemed thick with gross anticipation of violence to come. Lords rubbed shoulders with bakers and butchers; men who looked as if they had barely enough to feed and clothe themselves were clutching fistfuls of notes, waiting for the betting to begin.
“Now, this here is very educational,” said the captain, placing his mouth against Freddie’s ear to make himself heard. “Some say this sport dates from the days of Themistocles. That general, it seems, was leading the Athenian army against the Persians when he observed two cocks fighting.
“He stopped the match, called a halt, and pointed out to his troops that the birds fought ‘not for the gods of their country, nor for the monuments of their ancestors, nor glory, nor freedom, nor for their children; but for the sake of victory, and that one may not yield to the other.’ It is a noble sport. Have you seen a cockfight before?”
“Never,” said Freddie.
The captain then plunged into a description of the preparation for a fighting cock for the ring, which seemed to Freddie to smack of witchcraft. It lacked only the eye of newt.
It took six weeks to bring a cock to his prime. For the first four days of that period he was fed with “the crumb of old manchet (fine wheaten roll) cut into square bits, at sun-rising, when the sun is in his meridian, and at sun-setting.” His drinking water had to be from the coldest spring. After four days of this feeding, he was put to spar with another cock, with the cock’s heels being covered with a sort of boxing glove.
Then you took both contestants and gave them “a diaphoretic or sweating” by burying them deep in a basket of straw after a dose of sugar candy, chopped rosemary, and fresh butter. Towards evening, you took them out of their “stoves” and “licked their eyes and head with your tongue.”
Freddie was
beginning to feel faint from the noise and jostling and bustling and the captain’s hoarse voice shouting in his ear.
A basket on ropes swung above their heads. Anyone unable to pay his bets was put into the basket and hoisted high above the heads of the jeering crowd.
The cocks at last were brought forward, each concealed in a bag. The betting started before the “main,” or match, began.
Everyone was betting feverishly.
At last the cocks were taken out of their bags. The birds had been trimmed for the fight, the crown of the head being snipped off close; the hackles, or neck feathers, being moderately shortened; and the tail feathers cut into the shape of a short fan.
Before Freddie’s terrified eyes, both birds were fitted with the deadly “gaffes,” or spurs. These, some two inches in length, were curved like a surgeon’s needle.
Freddie closed his eyes. Already, it seemed, he could see the carnage, the spurting blood.
One moment he was in his seat, dizzy and faint, and the next he was up on the table, his arms spread, crying, “Stop! Oh, please, stop.”
There was utter and complete silence.
“How can you, in the name of God and all his angels,” said Freddie, tears starting to his eyes, “allow such a disgusting and detestable sport to take place?”
There was a great jeering roar of derision.
“Put ’im in the basket and let’s be done with ’im,” shouted one voice, louder than the rest.
This was greeted with a roar of approval, and hands reached out to seize Freddie.
Freddie drew his small, short sword and waved it about, his face flushed and determined.
A young exquisite leapt nimbly onto the cockpit table, drew his own sword, and faced Freddie. “Let’s see what type of fighting cock you are, young fellow,” he sneered.
Eyes glittering with unshed tears, Freddie gamely squared up to his opponent. Betting started as everyone began to lay odds on the outcome of the contest. Captain Cramble, who had been about to flee in case he ended up in the basket with Freddie, sat down again and promptly began laying his bets. He had seen Freddie’s expertise with the small sword. Although Freddie’s opponent was taller and stronger and had the longer reach, the captain was confident that Freddie would acquit himself well.
The fight began. Freddie lunged and parried, nimbly keeping his footing on the small stage afforded by the table, dodging time and again under his opponent’s arm.
Tense, ugly, and flushed with excitement, the tiers of spectators waited for first blood.
Into the tense and strained silence a shot rang out like a clap of thunder.
“Hold hard,” cried a loud voice. “The next man that moves will get his brains blown out.”
The Earl of Berham, smoking dueling pistol in one hand, vaulted lightly over the heads of the spectators and down onto the table.
Freddie looked at him. The young man’s face was ashen, his lips were white, and his blue eyes were blurred with tears.
“Sir,” said Freddie weakly, “I was trying to stop the cockfight.” Then he collapsed in a dead faint.
The earl swung him over one shoulder and darted lightly up over the benches before the stunned audience had time to make a move.
His groom was standing outside the cockpit, holding the reins of a team of matched bays harnessed to a racing curricle. The earl dumped Freddie like a sack of potatoes on the seat, called to the groom to stand away from the horses’ heads, and set off, hell for leather, out of Hardcaster.
When he was a mile out of town, he finally reined in his horses and looked grimly down at Freddie, who had recovered from his faint and was gazing at him with wide, frightened eyes.
“You have some explaining to do, Master Frederick,” said the earl harshly. “Or should I say… Miss Frederica?”
Chapter 3
“How did you find me?” Freddie Asked In A Low voice.
The earl turned his head and told his groom to walk down the road a little and leave them to have their conversation in private. Then he said, “MacNab, the gardener, saw a bill dropping from the captain’s gig as you drove off. He found it advertised a cockfight in Hardcaster. He guessed that I would not approve and sent a messenger to Mrs. Bellisle’s to tell me the news. I came as fast as I could. Had you been the young man you pretend to be, I should simply have waited until the captain returned with you. I disapprove of cockfighting. But I had guessed you were a girl and was frightened you might betray your sex. So I had to travel as fast as I could. The question is, Where is the real Frederick Armstrong?”
Freddie twisted her fingers and gave a little sigh. “There is no Frederick Armstrong. I am Frederica Armstrong, granddaughter of Colonel Armstrong.”
“But why this masquerade? And why did that parcel of lawyers go along with this farce?”
“My grandfather never told anyone I was a girl,” sighed Freddie. “My father died three months before I was born. My mother died in childbirth. So, you see, apart from two servants who are now dead, there was no one to contest grandfather’s claim that I was a boy. He made me wear boy’s clothes and had tutors teach me to ride and fence.”
“I have heard of some eccentrics wanting a son so much that they will almost turn a girl into one. Was that the reason for this folly?”
Freddie shook her red head. “No, Grandfather had very odd views. He thought women had a dangerous life. He did not think he would be alive to see me wed, and so he said it would be better for me to be a boy. He said unprotected women were easy prey to the lusts of men. He told me I must understand these were the hard facts of life. He even took me to a brothel once to… to observe.”
“It was all very odd,” Freddie went on, turning a pair of ingenuous blue eyes up to the earl’s brooding face. “I would never have thought that ladies could behave in such an undignified manner. As a matter of fact, I was quite sick.”
The earl looked straight ahead between his horses’ ears. “If your grandfather were alive,” he said in measured tones, “I would shoot him for doing such a thing to an innocent girl.”
“Oh, he was very kindly,” explained Freddie. “He simply feared for my future welfare.”
“He must have been some kind of a satyr himself,” the earl pointed out caustically, “to think that all men were consumed by base lust. Furthermore, did it not cross his mind that he should hire some female companion or governess or have you adopted by some lady of quality?”
“No. You see, he had alienated nearly everybody, apart from the vicar, that is, and the vicar thought I was a boy and would have been monstrous shocked to find out that was not the case.”
“Did none of your tutors guess the identity of your sex?”
“No,” sighed Freddie, “because I was… I am,” she added with a rueful look at her own slim figure, “very boyish in appearance. Of course, when I was younger, there was nothing really to wonder about. Now, of course, that I am grown, I began to appear effeminate. My voice is quite low, but it is uncomfortable to wear a binder at all times, especially in hot weather.”
“A binder?”
Freddie flushed and made a fleeting gesture with one hand towards her flattened bosom.
“Now what am I to do with you?” sighed the earl as Freddie’s blue eyes filled with tears. “No, don’t cry,” he said gently. “I shall not berate you for a circumstance which was none of your making. But only see the difficulties of my position. Were the fact to come out that you are a girl, you would be compromised. No one would believe I had not known.”
“If I loved someone,” said Freddie, twisting a handkerchief in her fingers, “I would believe him without question.”
“Perhaps you are right. I need the help of a lady. I shall speak to Lady Rennenord on my return.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Freddie quickly. “She will think the very worst.”
“Look, young man, I mean, young lady, it has been quite obvious to me that you have taken Lady Rennenord in dislike. You will treat her wi
th the utmost civility for my sake, if not for your own. For your information, I was about to propose marriage to her when my servant burst in with the intelligence of your visit to the cockfight.”
“I would not have her know,” said Freddie, turning her face away.
A broad river meandered through the fields beside the road. Freddie watched the reflection of the full-bottomed clouds scudding across its surface, quivering and distorted by the ripples of the dying wind. The earl watched Freddie.
Her red hair blazed and dimmed and blazed again in the fleeting checkerboard of sun and shadow. She had not been cursed with a redhead’s usual pale and freckled complexion but had a rose-leaf cheek and vivid blue eyes, their long black lashes tipped with gold. He was amazed that he had ever considered her a boy. She looked at that moment, even with her averted head, extremely feminine and vulnerable.
Her odd, husky voice spoke again: “What will become of me?”
“I think I must consult Lady Rennenord,” said the earl quietly. “I know you do not like her, but have you considered it is because you have not been in the way of female company?”
No answer.
“Nonetheless,” said the earl after a pause, “I must consult her, if only because, as my intended bride, she should not be kept from anything that concerns my life. The servants, too, must be told. They are loyal to me and will not gossip.”
“They will all stare at me and…”
“I shall address them while you are not present,” replied the earl. “You may leave matters to me.”
The earl called to his groom, who was waiting discreetly at a short distance down the road, and then picked up the reins. Freddie clutched at the side of the curricle and wondered miserably what was in store for her. If Lady Rennenord had any say in her future, Freddie was sure it would be something unpleasant.
By the time the tall chimneys of Berham Court began to appear above the trees, Freddie was beginning to feel considerably more cheerful. She had decided that Lady Rennenord would be so shocked by the masquerade that she would have nothing further to do with the earl.