Lament for a Lost Lover

by Philippa Carr

  She nodded. “There by the fire, mistress.”

  “You put it there?”

  She nodded again. “It keeps evil away. We always have used it.”

  “Evil?”

  “Witches and the like.”

  “You think …”

  “Mistress, I don’t know what I think. ’Cept that ’tis as well to be safe.”

  I was silent for a while. Then I said: “He’s breathing better now.”

  “I noticed he were better when I brought the garlic in.”

  “Oh, Sally, tell me what’s in your mind. Is there anything in this house that could harm him?”

  “I’m not saying it is so, mistress, and then again I’m not saying ’tis not. ’Tis only that I would be on the side of safety.”

  “Oh, God,” I whispered. “Could it really be so?”

  “The garlic keeps evil away. They don’t like it. There’s something in it that upsets ’em. I don’t like what’s in this house, mistress.”

  “Sally, tell me everything. If there is something threatening my son, I must know.”

  “There’s some I wouldn’t trust, mistress.”

  No, I thought. Nor I.

  “This little one,” she went on, “to be a lord … to own all this, for that is how it is. He lost his father who would have had it first, and then by the time our little one came into it, he would have been a man. That would have been natural and easy. But when a little child has all this … It has been so with kings, I believe. I’m not clever and know nothing of these matters, but ’tis human nature, that’s all, and I reckon I know a bit about that.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “There was one I found in here … looking at him as he lay in his bed.”

  “I saw someone too.”

  “I reckon it was the same one.”

  “What did she come for?”

  “She said she was anxious about you. She knew how worried you were and she was sure the child had only a cold. She went out soon when I came in, and I thought what benefit it could be to her if …”

  “You suspect … witchcraft?”

  “It’s always been in the world and I reckon should be watched for. But we’ll guard him. We’ll save him from whatever be threatening him. We’ll do it, mistress, together. Witchcraft can’t stand against good pure love. That I do know.”

  At any other time I should have laughed her to scorn. But it is different when a loved one is concerned. By daylight I could be bold and laugh at stories of ghosts and evil influences, but by night I could fear them. Thus it was. My child in possible danger and I could not turn skeptically away from that.

  Sally believed in witchcraft. Moreover, she was suggesting there might be a witch in our house.

  Harriet. Standing at the bed, the glitter in her eyes seeing a title within her reach but my son standing in her way.

  I remembered what I had read in the diaries of my great-grandmother Linnet Casvellyn who had let a strange woman into her house—a witch from the sea.

  It could happen. I would not leave Edwin again until he was well. I would not allow Harriet to step across the threshold of this room.

  All through that night Sally and I sat in her room and at Edwin’s slightest whimper we were at his bedside. Halfway through the night his breathing was easier. And in the morning his fever had gone.

  I could smell the garlic in the grate. I looked at Sally’s simple, loving face and I embraced her.

  “He is going to get well,” I said. “Oh, Sally, Sally, what can I say to you?”

  “We pulled him through, mistress. Together we pulled him through. No harm shall come to our little lord while we are close.”

  Edwin was well on the way to recovery by the time Carleton returned, angry still because of what he called my defection.

  “I told you so,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that boy except too much pampering. I’m going to get to work on him as soon as he’s completely fit.”

  I was so happy in my son’s recovery that I wanted to celebrate it and Carleton’s return together. Harriet said she would sing and dance for the company and perhaps we could get everyone to join in the dance. The boys would enjoy that.

  Carleton was amused, but I noticed that his attitude had changed since his return. He had not forgiven me for staying behind, and our relationship was more as it had been before our marriage. He seemed critical of me and tried to make me so with him—which did not need a great deal of effort on his behalf. I missed a certain tenderness in his lovemaking. He was as fiercely passionate and demanding as ever and talked even more frequently of his desire for another child—a boy this time—and I accused him of a lack of interest in Priscilla.

  “For the child’s sake,” he retorted. “If she had two parents treating her as if she is the only creature of any importance in the world, she’d grow up to be insufferable.”

  “A little too like her father perhaps,” was my retort.

  So we sparred during the day and made love at night. It was exciting but vaguely disturbing. I knew that he really was angry. He is the most arrogant, self-centred man in the world, I thought. And I was a little angry with myself for caring for him in the way I did. But I could not help my nature, I supposed, and any more than he could his.

  At supper one night soon after his return, he talked about his stay in London.

  “It’s like a breath of life to get up there,” he said. “One gets stultified in the country. I must go more often.” He was looking at me, implying: And you should come with me, and if your children are more important than your husband, take the consequences! He went on to talk of the new plans for rebuilding the city in which the King was greatly interested. Carleton had met Christopher Wren, who had brought out a plan for rebuilding the city which would make people see the great fire of London almost as a blessing.

  Of course, it would be very costly and great sums of money would be needed, he explained. “It seems unlikely that these will be raised, but the building must start at once so it will doubtless be done piecemeal.” Carleton was eulogistic about Christopher Wren.

  “A genius,” he said. “And a happy man. He knows he won’t be able to build what he wants, but he’ll settle for second best. He has plans for a cathedral and about fifty parish churches. We shan’t recognize the old city but what a grand place it will be when he has finished it. Moreover it’ll be healthier. Those wooden buildings huddled together, those filthy gutters … With our new London we shan’t have epidemics every few years, I promise you.”

  He was quite clearly exhilarated by his visit to London and that seemed to make him all the more angry with me for refusing to share it with him.

  As we sat round the table he discussed the prevailing scandals. Everyone was now talking about the Duke of Buckingham’s affair with Lady Shrewsbury and his duel with her husband.

  “Buckingham may well be accused of murder,” said Carleton.

  “Serve him right,” said Matilda. “People should not fight duels. It’s a stupid way of settling a quarrel.”

  “They say it was a great love affair between Buckingham and Shrewsbury’s wife,” said Charlotte.

  “She has been his mistress,” Carleton put in. “That has been common knowledge for a long time and Shrewsbury, like a self-respecting husband, challenged Buckingham to a duel.”

  Harriet smiled at Uncle Toby. “Would you do that, my darling, if I took a lover?”

  Uncle Toby almost choked with laughter. “I would indeed, my love.”

  “Just like my Lord Shrewsbury,” cried Harriet, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

  “I hope,” went on Carleton looking steadily at her, “that you would not behave like Lady Shrewsbury. That lady dressed herself as a page and held Buckingham’s horse while the duel took place, and as soon as it was over and Shrewsbury mortally wounded, the lovers went to an inn and Buckingham made love to her dressed as he was in his bloodstained clothes.”

  “An act of defiance ag
ainst morality,” I said.

  “Trust you to discover that,” said Carleton half mocking, half admiring.

  “And what is going to happen to these wicked people?” asked Matilda.

  “Shrewsbury is dying, and Buckingham is living openly with Lady Shrewsbury. The King has expressed his displeasure but has forgiven Buckingham. He is such an amusing fellow, and in any case Charles is too much of a realist to condemn others for what he practises so assiduously himself.”

  “Not duelling,” said Charlotte.

  “No, adultery,” added Carleton. “Charles hates killing. He thinks Shrewsbury was a fool. He should have accepted the fact that his wife preferred Buckingham and left it at that.”

  “Kings set the fashion at courts,” said Charlotte. “How different from Cromwell.”

  “One extreme will always follow another,” pointed out Carleton. “If the Puritans had not been so severe, those who followed might not have been so lax.”

  “Oh, dear,” sighed Matilda, “what a pity things can’t be as they were before the war and all these troubles arose.”

  “It’s the perpetual sighing for the old days, I fear,” said Carleton. “They seem so good looking back. It’s a disease called nostalgia. It affects quite a lot of us.”

  He was looking at me, resenting the happiness I had had with Edwin, believing that in spite of what I had discovered I still remembered it.

  The celebration took place shortly after that conversation. It began as a happy occasion and almost ended in disaster. For several days they had been preparing for it in the kitchens and our table was a credit to the servants. We had the family and the Dollans and the Cleavers and another family who came from a few miles away. The two boys were with us and everyone was complimenting me on Edwin’s healthy looks and saying that there could be little wrong with a boy who could recover so quickly from a virulent fever.

  Harriet somehow managed to make herself the centre of attraction just as she had in the old days. She sang for us, and as she sat there strumming her lute with her lovely hair falling over her shoulders, my mind went right back to the days in Congrève when she had seemed to me like a goddess from another world.

  That she seemed just that to Uncle Toby was obvious. He was so proud of her, so much in love, and it occurred to me that even if she had contrived to marry him for what she could get, at least she had made him happy.

  I was pleased too that Matthew Dollan was there, and Charlotte, too. Charlotte seemed to be quite happy, although she could not rid herself of that suspicious attitude which seemed to say, I know you’re only being pleasant to me because it’s polite to be so.

  When the children had gone to bed we went to the ballroom which had been made ready for dancing, and there the musicians played and we were very merry.

  As Carleton led me into the dance, he asked if I felt it was an occasion worthy of the reason for having it.

  “I think it goes well,” I said.

  “A thanksgiving because our young Edwin was snatched from the gates of death?”

  I shivered.

  “What a fond and foolish mother you are, Arabella! The boy is completely healthy. You should be thanking the fates for my return to you, not his from the aforementioned gates.”

  “It is to celebrate two happy events.”

  “So you are glad to have me back?”

  “Have I not made that clear?”

  “On occasions,” he said. “I say, look at Toby.”

  I looked. He was dancing with Harriet. His face was overred I thought and his breaking a little short.

  “He drank too much wine,” I said.

  “Not unusual, I’m afraid.”

  “Harriet shouldn’t let him exert himself like that. Will you speak to her?”

  “I will. When the dance is over.”

  But that was to prove too late, for there was a sudden cry, and a hushed silence. I looked round. Toby was on the floor and Harriet was kneeling beside him.

  Carleton rushed over and examined his uncle. “He is breathing,” he said. “We must get him to his room. Arabella, send them for the doctor.”

  That was the end of the dance. Toby was carried up to his room and in due course the doctor came and told us that Toby had had a heart attack. It was due, it seemed, to overexerting himself. I sat with Harriet at his bedside. She was very subdued. There was anxiety in her face and I knew that she was thinking of what her position would be if Uncle Toby died.

  He did not die. In a few days it was clear that he would recover. The doctor said that he had had a warning. He had overexerted himself and must, in future, remember his age. He must go very carefully now.

  “I shall insist,” said Harriet. “I am going to look after you, my darling.”

  It was pathetic to see the way in which he relied on her, and I have to say that she nursed him well.

  Carleton said: “It’s probably a good thing that it happened. It’s brought home to him the fact that he’s not the young man he has been thinking he was.”

  Spring came. Edwin was himself again and Sally’s theories about witchcraft seemed ridiculous. The boys were very fond of Harriet and she seemed to be a model wife to Toby. She was soon exerting the old fascination over Edwin and Leigh as she had over my brothers and sister. She was always singing and acting for them and they enjoyed being in her company.

  Uncle Toby’s eyes followed her wherever she was. “What a mother she would make,” he said.

  Although I suspected her motives for marrying him, I must say that she made him happy. She was never irritable or bad tempered with him. She always called him “my darling husband” and to him she was always “my love.” He put such a wealth of feeling into the endearment that it was never used lightly, as in some cases.

  Carleton had turned his attention to Edwin. He accused me of pampering him and said it was time someone took him in hand. I was a little afraid at first. I thought that he was going to wreak his resentment on my son. It occurred to me that I didn’t really know about Carleton everything a wife should know of her husband. I knew that he was strongly drawn to me; I knew that he desired me and that desire had not yet abated with familiarity. But sometimes I felt he wanted to be revenged on me. He had a strange, wild nature.

  However I could not stop his supervising the outdoor education of my son, and as Leigh was with him, I supposed that it really was good for Edwin to have a man to teach him. I myself was giving them lessons and Harriet insisted on helping me. It reminded me so much of the old days at Congrève. There was a great deal of acting in the schoolroom and of course the boys loved that.

  It was Carleton who said that we should have a tutor for the boys. They could not be taught forever by two women. “Besides,” he said, “I can see you making excuses that you have your schoolroom duties when I want you to come with me to London.”

  It was like Carleton to act immediately, and within a few weeks of his announcing that the boys should have a tutor, Gregory Stevens arrived.

  Gregory was an extremely good-looking young man, the second son of a titled family and therefore without great means but with some expectations. He was an excellent sportsman and as he was something of a scholar and interested in young people, he had decided to become a tutor for a while until those expectations were realized. Carleton said he possessed all the necessary qualifications for teaching the boys, and he was right. Gregory was strict, but he won the boys’ respect and it seemed a very good arrangement.

  Harriet still insisted on going to the schoolroom to tell the boys about plays and act for them. Although Gregory Stevens had thought this unnecessary at first, he was soon agreeing that Harriet’s special knowledge and her ability to interest the boys in the literature of the day and of the past was beneficial.

  Carleton was teaching them riding, shooting, falconry and fencing. Gregory Stevens helped in this and my misgivings faded when I heard the shouts of triumph when one of them scored and listened to their excited chatter. I knew that Carleto
n was right and I must not be so afraid of Edwin’s hurting himself that I might curb his mastery of these manly activities.

  I spent a great deal of time with my daughter who was now developing a personality of her own and was a little wilful I must admit, which I said must be expected with such a father. I was angry with Carleton because he expressed so little interest in her and I determined to shower her with extra love in case she should notice her father’s neglect.

  In the early spring I became pregnant again. Carleton was beside himself with joy. He was so certain that this time I was going to provide a child of the right sex. It worried me—this obsession for a boy.

  He could scarcely talk of anything else. He was so tender and careful of me that I could not help enjoying that, but sometimes I was filled with misgivings.

  I said to him: “What if this child should be a girl?”

  “It won’t be,” he said firmly, as though he could arrange these matters. “I know I’m going to have a son this time.”

  “It’s absurd,” I said. “You have a beautiful daughter and you hardly notice her.”

  “You’re going to give me my son, Arabella. I knew you would from the moment I saw you.”

  I began to feel apprehensive. Sally Nullens noticed it. “It’s bad for you,” she said. “Give over. Just sit back in peace and wait.”

  I wished I could.

  Harriet came to the bedroom often when I was alone. She liked to sit and watch me sewing a baby garment. I took a great pleasure in doing this although I was no needlewoman.

  “Carleton is beside himself with joy,” said Harriet. She watched me anxiously. “You’re worried, Arabella.”

  “I just want this to be over. I want to be lying in that bed with my son in his cradle beside me.”

  “He is going to put Madame Priscilla’s nose out of joint.”

  “No one could change my feelings for her,” I said.

  “Of course not. You’re the perfect mother. Oh, Arabella, what a lot has happened to us since the old days. We are both mothers … both Eversleighs. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “That we are both Eversleighs? It did not come about without a certain contrivance.”