Sir Ralph, his florid face paler from emotion, had gone behind the bedcurtains. He emerged again, his prominent eyes like those of an anxious fish. ‘Barbara, I cannot hear him. There is something he is trying to say, poor fellow. He is rambling about “the flinging off of all honour” – his voice is so weak, I cannot make out the rest.’
Barbara swept forward with a rustle of her silk gown. ‘Let me try. I am accustomed to the faintness of his voice. I will try to catch his words. Stand back everyone! In his feeble state the sight or sound of so many people round him might be fatal.’
Her tone was commanding. Her eyes blazed with a look of power. Sir Ralph willingly stood aside. She parted the bedcurtains and drew them behind her. She was enclosed with the sick man in the muffled gloom of the bed as in a little room. She bent over Hogarth, gently drew the feather pillow from beneath his head and placed it over his face…
When she came out from behind the curtains, her face was deathly white. She answered the anxious and enquiring looks with a shake of her head.
She said dully, ‘It is too late. I raised his head. I tried to hear. Too late. He has gone to his reward.’
She fell down fainting to the floor.
8
THE KNOT IS BROKEN
‘False hearts and broken vows.’1
HOGARTH WAS BURIED, and with him Lady Skelton’s secret. So she told herself, not so much in triumph or hatred (for after her first outburst of frustrated rage she had come to feel little more than a pitying contempt for the deluded steward), but with an enveloping sense of relief. The disposal of Hogarth (for so she expressed it to herself) had been an unpleasant necessity. She had hastened his departure to those heavenly regions in which he took so keen an interest, without compunction but without undue malice. Indeed, in her role of sick nurse, she had really tried to alleviate his pain and discomfort, as far as was consistent with the business in hand. It had been an irksome, exhausting and, to one of her fastidious senses, a somewhat revolting affair.
But it was over now. Sir Ralph had given him a handsome funeral, distributing gloves and scarves among the mourners as if, as Agatha Trimble had remarked acidly, he had been a member of the family. Barbara resolved to put Hogarth out of her mind, to bury him for a second time, as it were, in the dark regions below conscious thought. She felt almost deliriously safe and free. She felt, rising imperious within her, the craving to escape as soon as possible from this gloomy house, cradled in the damp, dripping greenness of its clustering trees, to the warmth of her lover’s arms.
It was the saddest night of rain, the night after the funeral, that had been known that season. The rain fell steadily, stubbornly, as though the skies were dissolving into water. Not a night to venture abroad, but Barbara could not wait. When the household had retired to its rest she went up to the little hidden room, dressed herself impatiently in her man’s clothes, masked herself, and stole out of the house.
Cantering along the yew hedges, she was sheltered by the thick walls of the yew hedges themselves and the interlacing branches of the trees overhead from the teeming wetness of the night. But out in the open countryside it seemed to her as if she were riding through a waterfall. The earth, squelching mud and water beneath her horse’s hoofs, seemed to be trying to liquefy in sympathy with the weeping sky. The rain pelted down on to her slouched hat and ran in rivulets on to her cloak; her leather gloves were sodden as she held the reins, her hair hung wet as seaweed on her cheeks. But she did not care. She even rejoiced in the inclemency of the night, finding a savage refreshment in the raw air and the rain, after her nights of vigil in the sour-smelling sickroom, all the stuffy hypocrisy in which she had been forced to indulge. No more prayers, contrition, pious homilies for Barbara Skelton, but the highway, the pistol-shot and the embraces of her lawless lover!
She had had no time to warn Jackson of her coming, so sharp had been her impatience, but something assured her that he would be at the ‘Leaping Stag’ tonight. She pictured, with sensuous pleasure, his astonishment and joy as she appeared before him and threw herself into his arms.
As she drew near the inn she could see a glimmer of light through the trees. She rode up to the side door; it was unlocked and she let herself into the yard. No one was about. She went unobserved into the inn. She stood there at the foot of the staircase for a moment, the water running off her riding boots and cloak making a pool around her. A door opened and the landlady of the inn came through. She started as she saw Barbara. ‘What, you!’
Excitement, feverish anticipation of delights to come, gave a sound of gaiety, almost of geniality to Barbara’s voice as she replied, ‘Yes, I am back. Is Captain Jackson here?’ Mistress Molly looked at her sharply. Then she smiled and nodded her head. ‘Oh yes, he is here. He is lying here the night. He is upstairs in the usual room. You should go up and see him. He will be mighty content to see you.’
Her smile broadened into a leer. Barbara ignored it and, throwing her cloak with an insolent gesture on to the floor, bounded up the stairs. The landlady muttered savagely as she stooped and picked it up, ‘Ho, ho! my piece of imperious cruelty, I wish you joy of what you find up there.’
Barbara paused outside the door of the bedroom, savouring the passionate excitement of the moment. Then she opened the door gently and slipped into the room. It was lighted by a solitary candle. Captain Jackson was in bed and in bed with him was a tousled, fair-haired girl.
Jerry Jackson sat up with an oath, saw Barbara and stared at her with an expression of ludicrous dismay.
‘Barbara! You!’
She stood quite still, regarding them, her lips smiling dangerously beneath her mask.
He blustered out excuses. ‘A pox on it! I never thought you’d do the business so soon. I swear I am heartily sorry for this. This wench is nothing’ (ignoring a slap and a shrill protest from his bedfellow), ‘just a ramping girl I brought down from town…’
His voice failed, withered by Barbara’s deadly look.
‘You look very well together. Pray do not disturb yourself,’ said Lady Skelton in a cool, composed voice. ‘I told you that if you were unfaithful to me here our knot would be broken for ever. You may find that this strumpet, cheap though she looks, may cost you very dear. Farewell – till the next merry meeting.’
She walked quietly down the stairs, swept past the landlady who was waiting in spiteful anticipation at the bottom of the stairs, and went into the little parlour. There were writing materials here and Lady Skelton penned a brief note. She wrote hastily, for she could hear Jackson in violent altercation upstairs with his room-mate.
She passed through the hall and the landlady, cowed by something indescribably menacing in her still face and swift smooth movements, shrank back as she passed. She went out to the yard, mounted Fleury and, spurring him cruelly for the first time in her life, rode furiously out into the night.
The local constable was roused at midnight by a fierce hammering on his door. He opened the window and thrust his head out into the streaming rain.
‘Who the devil is there? What d’you want?’
He could only just discern the figure of a man on horseback below the window. The rider stood up in his stirrups and, lifting his arm, thrust a piece of paper on to the window-sill.
‘Stop! Hi! What is this? Who are you?’
But the unknown rider was away; the sound of his horse’s hoofs came muffled through the swish of the rain, and died away.
The constable, much astonished, unfolded the piece of paper and read slowly (for he was not a notable scholar):
‘Haste! haste! If you would catch the notorious highway robber Jerry Jackson, he is harboured tonight at the “Leaping Stag” inn.’
The letter had no superscription nor signature, and seemed by the handwriting to have been written in wild urgency or passion.
9
THE HEAVY HILL
‘For an outlaw this is the law,
That men him take and bind,
Without pit
ie, hanged to be
And wave with the wind.’1
‘LADY SKELTON, PRINTED on the River of Thames being frozen. In the 36th year of King Charles II, January 23rd.’2
Barbara gave a childish exclamation of pleasure as she read the little card. She slipped it into her muff and said impulsively to the young gallant by her side, ‘Thank you. I will keep it always. It will be something to remind me of this prodigious sight.’
She gazed round her with eager curiosity and delight. Prodigious sight, indeed, and one that she could hardly expect to see again. It was seventy-five years since the citizens of London had been able to disport themselves in this strange way on the Thames. It might be another seventy years, perhaps a hundred, before they could do so again. A hundred years – a thousand years – it was all the same to Barbara; a shapeless, meaningless void, a nothingness, when Barbara Skelton would be no more. This present moment, this gay, exhilarating, unusual now, was all that mattered, and Barbara, with quickened senses and heightened spirits, was determined to extract the utmost enjoyment from each hour.
England was gripped by the greatest frost within living memory. The island lay locked in seas that were frozen for two miles from the coast. On land, town was isolated from town, village from village, snow-drifts and ice made the roads impassable. Fish, birds, beasts and even men perished in the cruel cold. Every day brought news of fresh accidents and disasters. Religious fanatics of the more extreme Protestant persuasion, rejoicing in this natural phenomenon, as they had rejoiced in the Plague and the Great Fire twenty odd years ago, cried woe upon the kingdom, upon its licentious monarch and his papist Portuguese queen and his papist French whore.3 Enthusiastic gardeners lamented the destruction of their exotic plants. In garrets, back courts and alleys, whose foetid stenches not even the intense cold could purify, the poor suffered miserably. The streets were full of ‘poor pestiferous creatures’4 with chattering teeth and pinched blue noses, begging for alms. Lady Skelton, driving by in her coach, muffled in velvet and furs, threw a coin or two to the beggars shivering in the gutter. Their Majesties were said to be distributing relief to the needy; charity was all the vogue.
The London streets were unfamiliar, with the gables of the houses blanketed with snow, and the winter sun failing to penetrate the thick fog that muffled the city as though the intense cold of the atmosphere had become palpable. But London’s great waterway, the Thames, was still more strangely transformed. Paralysed and dumb, its busy waters turned to ice, it was taking an enforced rest from its everyday occupations. The barges, wherries and skiffs lay moored by the steps, caught in the ice like flies in amber. The watermen, their tempers and language by no means improved by the frost and their pecuniary loss, had to vent their surliness on one another in riverside pot-houses. The ‘shootman’ at London Bridge, whose duty it was to signal the safest passage to the bridge shooters who, for a consideration, were ready to guide boats through the arches, gazed down in amazement at the frozen rapids and declared ten times an hour that he had never thought to see the like.
But if the Thames had retired temporarily from business it could still be London’s playground. Londoners of all degrees and ages flocked on to its frozen surface as soon as the ice was strong enough to bear them, slipping, sliding, shouting, revelling like children in the queer sensation of being able to cross the river on foot. The frost continuing day after day, some enterprising persons set up booths, where they sold hot meats and ale. Their example was quickly followed, and soon a whole town of booths and stalls, arranged in rows like streets, sprang up on the frozen river.
There was the printing press where Lady Skelton had got her card, and which had been honoured by a visit from His Gracious Majesty; there were stalls for hot pies, roasted chestnuts and sweetmeats, miniature coffee houses where the better sort could warm themselves not only with the fashionable beverage but with ‘mum’,5 and spiced and buttered ale. The tippling booths did a roaring trade among the mob, fortune-tellers, quack physicians and card-sharpers were there in force, so were the painted ladies from Drury Lane and St Giles. There were gambling booths and, in the phraseology of the respectable, ‘other lewd places’. For the ladies there were vendors of ribbons, laces, combs and knick-knacks. There were puppet shows, plays, interludes, bull-baiting, cock-fighting, sledging, and even horse and coach racing, for the ice was now strong enough to bear wheeled traffic.
Torches flamed in the thick foggy air; people warmed themselves before bonfires and (as this was England) from these convivial groups came the strumming of stringed instruments, the sound of voices defying the raw atmosphere, upraised in bawdy snatches, or in the sweet plaintive lilt of a love song.
The fun continued all day, and long into the bitter night.
This was London’s great Frost Fair, London’s unexpected, unrehearsed Carnival, and the Londoners were enjoying it with their unsurpassable zest. Rich and poor, fashionable and obscure, no one was too grand or too humble to share in the public merriment. Ordinary life was at a standstill, the cobbled streets were infinitely more dangerous than the ice. Nature herself had granted the city a royal holiday.
Barbara, ignoring Sir Ralph’s complaint that the Frost Fair was the resort of all the most ‘rascally, whoring, roguing sort of people’, was a constant visitor to the River. If her husband would not accompany her (and, as usual on his rare visits to London, he was occupied with all kinds of staid and tedious business and interviews with personages of state), there were plenty of lively young gallants who were eager for the privilege of acting as escort to the lovely Lady Skelton.
Barbara had been an immediate success on her appearance at Whitehall a month or so ago. Her elegance, and something unusual, even bizarre, about her beauty, caused a stir. It was asked why this vivid and alluring-looking creature had allowed herself to be buried so long in the depths of Buckinghamshire with that pompous ass of a husband. She was ogled and made love to by the men, disliked by the women, had a poem written to her nose by a Court poet, was honoured by several glances of sardonic admiration from His Majesty, and by a sweetly spiteful enquiry from the Duchess of Portsmouth as to how long she intended to stay in town. She had the exquisite satisfaction of outshining her florid Kingsclere sister-in-law at the Court revels. She was showered under with invitations to balls, supper, card and theatre parties.
As she sat side by side with some admirer in a box at the King’s or Duke of York’s theatre6, waiting with shining eyes for the velvet curtains to be drawn aside, displaying the little stage with its scenery screens and tall lighted wax candles, set like an illuminated picture in the darkness, she felt, with a secret thrill, that she herself was the actress in a play of her own devising. Talented actress that she was, she played two roles with equal success – Lady Skelton, gracious lady of the manor, elegant woman of fashion; Barbara of no surname – daring highwaywoman who rode, robbed, and killed as well as any man and would endure no interference nor betrayal. No wonder that these young men, satiated with the tame beauties of the Court, hovered moth-like round the bright, dangerous flame of her personality. The pity of it was that no one but herself could appreciate her versatility. Only one man had guessed how adroit she was, and the knowledge had brought him to his grave.
This visit to London had been just what she had needed to revive and set up her spirits after that hateful night at the ‘Leaping Stag’ inn. She owed it to the deceptive fragility of her appearance, and to her indulgent, silly mother-in-law.
It had not required much ingenuity on Barbara’s part to alarm old Lady Skelton about her health. Anger, mortification, jealousy of the most primitive kind, had raged unchecked in Barbara’s bosom after her discovery of her lover’s perfidy. To these harassing emotions was added a panic fear lest by her hasty betrayal of Jackson she had also betrayed herself. If he were apprehended would he in revenge, or in hope of obtaining a pardon, lay information against her that might lead to her identity being discovered? She broke into a sweat at the thought, cursed the spasm
of wild spite that had made her so unmindful of her own safety and interests.
It was the talk of the neighbourhood that a highwayman had been discovered at the ‘Leaping Stag’ inn, had escaped by jumping out of the window and had ridden away into the night. No one had heard what had become of him after that. So he had escaped after all! On the whole Barbara was relieved. She must forgo her revenge, but she believed him to be less dangerous to her at large than he would be in prison. She could not, however, be at ease till she had more sure information about his movements. He might be lurking in the neighbourhood, awaiting the opportunity to denounce her. Though she would not admit it to herself, she missed his swaggering, rollicking company. Life had become tasteless, a round of dull duties shot through with apprehension. Her nights were restless; her appetite failed. She moped in the house over her embroidery.
Old Lady Skelton warned her son that if he did not take his wife to London to consult a skilled physician he might lose her. Sir Ralph, stirred out of his usual complacency by his mother’s anxiety and Barbara’s pale and haggard air, agreed to spend the winter at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields – the more readily as he had some business to attend to in the capital. It was generally acknowledged that there was nothing like a visit to London to restore the health of ailing ladies from the country. The stinks, the outbreaks of plague, the atrocious noise – the rattle of wooden wheels on cobbles, the shouts of street vendors, ‘Kitchen stuff ha’ you maids!’ ‘Buy a mousetrap – a mousetrap or a tormentor for your fleas,’ milkmaids rattling their pails, apprentices shouting ‘What d’ye lack?’, the bawling of hackney coachmen and of footmen clearing a way for their masters and, at night, the brawling of revellers – to be sure delicate females who had wilted in the fresh air and quiet of Devonshire or Herts positively thrived on all this. Lady Skelton was no exception. The day of her arrival in London she changed into her crimson velvet and was away in a coach to choose fans at the New Exchange and, by the time that the famous physician had been summoned to attend her, had so far recovered that he declared he could see very little wrong with her.
Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton Page 18