by Deryn Lake
He glanced over his shoulder but could see nothing; yet still the clamour of pursuit grew louder and ever louder in his ears. The sweat of his horse was slippery beneath him and foam appeared at the mouth of the frantic animal. Desperately Hyacinth wound his fingers into its mane. He knew that if he was thrown now it would mean a broken neck. And then, as if from nowhere, another two pairs of hooves added themselves to the din. And these were real and mortal enough. Behind him came a voice.
‘Hold on Mr Matthew, sirrh. Holy Moother of Chroist, the booger’s goin’ a hell of a lick.’
It was Tom, Melior Mary’s squint-eyed companion of childhood, bent over one of John Weston’s finest mounts and lathered like a jockey as he strove to catch up. And, after a few minutes, a string of Dublin expletives and the beating down of his riding crop actually brought him level. But there was nothing he could do about it and they charged side by side, as if in some ludicrous race, towards Sutton Place. Behind them the sound of their pursuer filled the air and Tom shouted, ‘Who’s that in the name of Chroist?’
Hyacinth could not answer, feeling at his last gasp. He was aware that another minute would see him done for, that he would simply let go and fall beneath the tumbling hooves.
‘Gilbert Bassett,’ he shouted. ‘Rest in peace, I command you. You’ve no right to this forest. You are dead, man! Dead!’
The sound of pursuit ended so abruptly that the silence was shocking. At one moment there had been the noise of a slavering horse at full gallop, at the next nothing but the stillness of the deep forest.
‘Are you all right, sirrh? What in the name of God was it? Glory be, me old moother told me of the Hounds of Hell but Oi’d never have believed it if I hadn’t heard it with me own ears. What with her doying of the gin and all.’
Hyacinth wiped his sleeve across his forehead as his horse, gasping near to death, finally came to rest.
‘Well, anyway sirrh, you’re out of it! And with nothing but a sore arse to show — if you’ll pardon the awkwardness of that phrase, sirrh. Shall I take the poor devil...’ he jerked his head in the direction of Ranter, ‘back to the big house, you looking as if you’re about to drop down on your hunkers, sirrh?’
Hyacinth shook his head.
‘No! I’ll see to her. Tom, thank you for saving my life.’ The squinting leprechaun grinned.
‘It’s a damn good thing that me old moother didn’t believe in ghosts, sirrh. Good day.’
And with that he disappeared once more, whistling, into the forest.
*
The trading ship had berthed at Calais, the great anchor — which held her riding in the wind some distance from the shore — down and secure in the seabed. A rope ladder had been lowered to a small rowing boat which lay tossing like a shuttlecock on the full swell below. Seated in the boat was a pretty young woman, dressed in a fox fur mantle, whose clear green eyes and strawberry hair would normally have attracted attention and shouts from the ragged bunch of sightseers who leaned against the harbour wall. But today all eyes were on an amazing personage which was lowering itself down the rope on high teetering heels that would have been more suitable at a Court levée. On top of its head was a tricorne hat that sported a ruby brooch shaped like a sickle moon, and beneath this a huge wig hung about its shoulders; a wig whose curls lifted menacingly as the sea breeze caught it — making the owner temporarily resemble a startled spaniel — and which seemed in imminent danger of lifting off and floating wildly out to sea.
From the personage’s shoulders hung a velvet cloak of the colour known as cyclamen, the lining of which was violet satin flecked with silver. And startling though this colour combination might be the personage had seen fit to carry it through his complete ensemble, for his many skirted coat was violet, his waistcoat silver encrusted pink, his breeches lavender. Long purple ribbons hung from the silver cane that was now being passed to him over the ship’s rail and which, despite a great deal of shrieking in a high voice, he seemed quite unable to grasp. In fact as he stretched his hand out one of the red-heeled, diamond-buckled shoes slipped and he appeared in momentary danger of plunging feet first into the ocean.
Sibella did not know where to look. If she had caught Joseph’s eye she would have laughed, so she contented herself with looking slightly to her husband’s right, a fact which could not be observed in the distance.
‘Zlife!’ he was screaming, ‘I warrant I’d as soon have the Great Pox as hang here like a monkey in extremis. Can none of you salt scalders get me down? Zoonters, one would think I pay you for looking, you do stare so! Sibella, do something.’
As if it had life of its own the rope ladder swung away from the ship’s side so that Joseph’s feeble struggles were suddenly redoubled in effort.
‘Dear God! Am I to end up drowned with me prinkum-prankum all gone for naught? Drag me in, you sons of...’
Fortunately the last few words were drowned by the sound of a distant cannon fired inshore. With a mighty effort, that could have been mistaken for extreme agility if it had been executed by anyone other than the enfeebled fop, Joseph jumped free of the ladder and landed in the rowing boat. He wiped his brow with a musk-scented lace handkerchief.
‘Odds Life, Sibella, I’ve aged ten years. I should have followed my instincts and stayed in London. Europe’s fit for nobody ’cept those who stare jackanapes at decaying ruins and unclimbable mountains. God’s wounds, I must be running demented!’
And with that he wrapped himself in his cloak, pulled his hat down over his eyes and fell to grumbling into his gums. It was with some measure of consternation that Sibella looked across at him, for even she had not been quite prepared for such a to-do as was now making the sailors snigger and the rowing party gaze steadfastly at the floor.
‘Joseph?’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t talk to me, I’m quite put about,’ came the reply — but from the folds of the cloak an eye bright as a water rat’s looked into hers for a second and then slowly winked.
‘Very well, sir. I shall not,’ she replied — turning her head away to hide her face.
As the boat made fast to a ring, set in the harbour wall by a flight of steps, a man detached himself from the crowd and stood waiting at the top, his hat in his hands. His twinkling eyes appraised Sibella in a manner that she considered bold but his unabashed delight in her left no room for annoyance, and so it was with a laugh that she first set foot on French soil. The stranger came forward and bowed over her hand, raising her fingers to his lips.
‘Mrs Gage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Captain Charles Wogan at your service, ma’am. May I humbly say that Joseph is a very lucky man.’
Behind them a peevish voice was raised in a high pitched moan as the impossible red heels minced up the steps amongst the disgusting flotsam of a French harbour.
A white hand with long thin fingers flapped a handkerchief and then pinioned it firmly over quivering nostrils.
‘Zblood!’ came the feeble cry.
‘Mr Gage, I have ordered your carriage, sir. If you and m’lady would be good enough to step this way.’
‘God a’mercy,’ Joseph shrilled. ‘I warrant if it is more than two paces I shall be dead with exhaustion. Everything is slipping away. Sibella, Wogan, take my arms if you’d be so good.’
He fell limply between them, his heels making a tap-tapping sound as they dragged him to where a closed spring coach stood at the ready, its driver peering anxiously in their direction. The Captain gave the man a nod — saying nothing about their destination — as he and Sibella bundled in a Joseph whose face had turned an unpleasant green colour. Exhausted, Sibella sank back against the seat only to see Joseph cautiously open one eye.
‘Is the coast clear?’ he muttered.
‘Aye, you son of a dolly-mop — begging your pardon, ma’am.’
Joseph sprang to his feet, shouted ‘Whee!’ like a schoolboy coming out of class and threw his hat and ridiculous wig aloft in the air. Sibella gaped astonishe
d as the Captain executed a nimble dance step or two and then fell down upon one knee before her, clasping one of her hands in both of his.
‘Why bless your little heart,’ he said. ‘Sure, Joseph, if it isn’t the prettiest little thing that ever drank milk. I love it — I do, I do.’
And with that he rained kisses on Sibella’s fingers.
‘And will you be coming with us, my pretty?’ he went on. ‘There’ll be nothing but the finest for you at the Polish Court. Why, they’ll be stuffing sweatmeats in your little mouth all day long.’
‘The Polish Court?’
She was utterly bewildered.
The Captain tried to look contrite but was forced to grin as he said, ‘And hasn’t it the sweetest voice! Why, Joseph, you’re the luckiest man alive. But the Polish Court it is, my precious little ma’am.’
He burst into song.
‘A frog he would a-wooing go, hey ho said Rowley! Whether the Captain would let him or no, with a roly-poly gammon and spinach — hey, ho, said the bride of King James.’
Joseph said, ‘So you’ve found her?’
‘I think so.’ The captain slapped his thigh. ‘By Christ — begging your pardon, ma’am — I’ve seen some of the ugliest women in the last few months. The Princess of Furstenberg has a nose like a drunk’s, the one from Saxony is fair, fat and forty-five, and the Princess of Baden’s a dwarf with the pox.’
‘Truly?’ said Sibella.
‘As true as I kneel here. But now I’ve found three little beauties — and all sisters. Poland has produced a merry nest of turtle doves. But which is it to be, that’s the question. So we’ll let your handsome husband decide, ma’am, for he can speak to them in their lingo and find out who’s the sweetest of nature.’
He hummed a few more bars and then said, ‘That is if you don’t object, ma’am.’
Just for a second Sibella hesitated, for she had no real desire to waste time while her bridegroom courted other women, albeit on behalf of King James. Then, in a great flash, she knew that they must go; that it was right; that one of the Polish Princesses would make a brilliant bride for the King and would bear a child that might easily regain the British throne.
‘Object?’ she said. ‘Why I can’t wait to see them. Come along Joseph, we can’t keep the ladies waiting.’
And with the sound of Wogan singing at top voice about them the horses leapt forward and the spring coach took the road to the French border.
11
‘...and so if you could go at once, sirrh, for himself is sweating loike a pig and his toes fairly lapping he’s in sooch a foine state of agitation.’
Tom was panting, having just run from the house to the stables, his squinting eyes so screwed up with concentration that it was quite impossible for Hyacinth to know in which direction he was looking.
‘What’s it about, do you know?’
‘Oi haven’t an oidea in me head, sirrh! Unless of course...’ the crossed eyes took on a sly expression, ‘...it would be about herself.’
He leered, gargoyle-like. Hyacinth, overcoming a wild desire to throttle the life out of him, said, ‘I have told you before to refer to the young mistress as Miss Melior.’
Tom pretended to look contrite and Hyacinth, in one of his rare black moods, kicked a stone. Ten months had passed since Sibella’s marriage to Joseph. Ten months during which Melior Mary had celebrated her sixteenth birthday and the gates of Sutton Place — closed previously as etiquette demanded to the suitors who would come from everywhere to try and obtain such a brilliant match — had been thrown open with an official assembly.
Young men had been there in droves — from London the usual collection of fops and beaux led by Lord Chesterfield’s handsome son; from the county a fine selection of stalwarts, the tallest and most dashing of which was Squire Roderick’s eldest boy Gabriel; the Catholic contingent en masse, with one or two eligible youths amongst them; and then the relatives. And in their midst, determinedly eyeing Melior Mary for all he was worth, her chubby cousin, William Wolffe.
Hyacinth had not met him before as William’s mother — John Weston’s sister, Frances — disliked socializing and preferred to lead a life of quietness at Haseley, amongst the beautiful gardens planted nearly two hundred years earlier by Margaret Weston, daughter of Sutton Place’s builder. Margaret and her husband, Walter Dennys, had gone, after their wedding, to live at Haseley Court and had created great walkways and water gardens, mint scented knots and rose-entwined arbours. By coincidence Frances Weston had also found herself there as a bride — for the place had long since passed out of the hands of the Dennys’s — and had set to work with devotion to restore her ancestress’s home. The house — badly decayed — had been gutted and rebuilt in what had become known, of late, as Queen Anne style, only one wing remaining of the old Tudor building. And the care and attention of the gardens had become her passion.
Now she looked about her as if she could not wait to get back again, her eyes scarcely taking in the fact that her son and Melior Mary were pounding about the Great Hall in time to a fierce gallop. And at exactly that moment Hyacinth, who had been glaring helplessly at the whirling couple, had felt a tugging at his sleeve and had heard a lisping voice say, ‘Mither Banithter, if you pleathe, thir, I have no partner for thith danthe.’
It had been William’s sister Arabelle, as tiny as a doll and with a childlike personality to match, who stood shaking her powdered curls as she put her head back to look at him.
‘I’d be tewwibly pleathed,’ she went on. ‘I do feel thuch a doltard when I thtand out. I twuly believe it is becauth I look like a little girl but I am theventeen — older than Cousin Melior — weally I am.’
Hyacinth had smiled down at her and offered her his arm, acutely aware that Melior Mary’s great eyes were resting on him. Because of this he had raised Arabelle’s fingers to his lips and been rewarded with a blush and a downward flutter of the eyelids from the pretty simpleton.
Ever since that night William Wolffe senior had taken to visiting Sutton Place every two weeks, bringing William and Arabelle and another child — an obnoxious, smelly brat of some thirteen years, called Beavis — with him. Frances Wolfe stayed behind, pleading indisposition though everyone knew that she was, in reality, walking about her gracious lawns, sighing in sheer ecstasy.
To the horror of Matthew — and the delight of John Weston and William Wolfe senior — Melior Mary seemed to find some amusement in the presence of her round-cheeked cousin and was forever riding off with him, presenting her back view to Matthew as he gazed after them. But never far away was a lisping voice.
‘Are you buthy, Mithter Banithter? I thould enjoy tho much to go widing with you. If we huwwy we can escape Beavis for he ith occupied thwowing thtones at the horthes.’
An involuntary oath had escaped Matthew’s lips as he had headed for the stables and the unlovely sight of Beavis, sitting aloft the hay bales, pinging pebbles from a catapult at the hapless beasts. One jump had got him up alongside and before the boy could move Hyacinth had swung him in the air by his collar.
‘Right, you little snot-blower, I’m going to smash your eyes out.’
Beavis started to shriek and from the ground below Arabelle launched into a series of shrill and meaningless cries.
‘Be quiet, you stupid girl,’ Matthew had snapped — quite furious with the whole family — but this set her off all the more and her howls, coupled with the yelping of her brother, must have been audible for some distance for into the furore walked Melior Mary, with William one step behind.
‘God’s wounds,’ she had shouted, ‘what’s this to-do? A thieves kitchen in Hell most like! Arabelle, stop bellowing; Matthew, put that boy down; Beavis, shut your mouth; William, fetch help.’
They all stared at her for a second and, though both Arabelle and Beavis were suddenly silenced, nobody spoke. It was Hyacinth who shouted out, ‘No Melior Mary, I will not. I intend to take him within an inch of his life. And if William wants to put up
his fists over it — he may!’
‘Damn you!’ said Melior Mary.
‘Your temper runs imperious, madam. And you may order others—’ Hyacinth’s eyes swept over William in a cold stare, ‘—but never me. If you were a boy nothing would give me greater pleasure than to step outside with you.’
That day had ended very quietly. William and Arabelle — the one plumply sulky, the other in copious fits of tears — had returned to Haseley early whilst Beavis, sullen and limping, had sat in the homeward bound coach for three hours, refusing to come out even for dainty cakes and lemonade. John and William senior had parted rather gruffly and Hyacinth had been sent to the stables where, after eating some cheese and drinking a bottle of rough red wine to himself, he had gone to bed.
From that time on he had been in semi-disgrace. John’s manner had become abrupt, the old fatherly way vanished. As for Melior Mary, she would not even look at him. Since that day, over a year ago, when she had given her body so freely, she had dismissed the incident as if it had never happened. He thought sometimes that she had forgotten the miracle of that morning when all the animal kingdom — he and she included — had felt the stirring of nature’s dark and relentless compulsion. Though she sometimes spoke of love she had never since shared with him its joy. She seemed to have chosen the role of innocent. And yet he would sometimes catch her looking at him with hidden fire in her glance. He often wondered if she enjoyed taunting him with her games.