She was going to Florence. She – the child who had sat enthralled at the tales of an enchanted city – was going herself to live there, to see the wide, muddy Arno and the spired and gabled city, to watch the children play and the lovers stroll in the Boboli Gardens—
‘You may kiss the bride.’
Robert’s hand, gentle upon her arm, brought her from her reverie. She lifted her face, alight and glowing as if at some vision. He hesitated for one second, then his lips brushed her cheek. She smiled at her husband brilliantly and took his arm to walk the dark aisle to the glory of sunshine beyond the open doors. The light dazzled them as they stepped into it. Then they were surrounded by laughing well-wishers, kissed and patted, Robert’s hand shaken. The bells pealed joyfully, silencing the birds.
Then, ‘Good God!’ someone said, ‘Whatever is the child doing?’
Heads lifted. Necks craned. Silence fell. ‘Oh, my God!’ Maria said, white-faced.
Out of the window of the tower high above them a small, brilliant figure had clambered and was making his dangerous way around the narrow, crumbling ledge that edged the decaying battlemented tower. In one hand he held a small bundle. Seeing he had caught the attention of those below he waved, blithely and at risk to life and limb. A shower of small stones sprayed from beneath one of his feet. Someone shouted. Maria put up a sharp, imperative hand. ‘No! Be still! Don’t distract him!’
In tense silence they watched as the child crept along the ledge, clinging like a bright-coloured fly to the weather-rotted walls. Jessica swallowed noisily. More stones scattered. Patrick stopped for a moment, testing the ledge, then moved on again more slowly. For what seemed an age they watched him, until at last he reached the gap in the battlements he had been making for and with a lithe twist of his body was through it and disappeared from sight onto the tower roof. There was a moment’s dead silence, then murmurs of relief and laughter began to ripple through the crowd, to gain in volume as from the tower two great silken silver streamers were suddenly unfurled to ream in the wind.
‘What the—? Oh, look! See what it says! “Jessica” and “Robert”! What a little tinker that child is! He surely can’t have realized the danger—?’
‘Giles. Send someone for a ladder.’ Maria’s voice was calm, her face sheened finely with perspiration.
Over the battlemented tower a small face appeared, marigold head gleaming picturesquely in the sun. The laughter grew, fed by relief. A small hand waved, casually. Many of the ladies plucked lace handkerchiefs from their sleeves and waved back. Someone started to clap. Patrick grinned like an imp of Satan. The silver streamers cracked gallantly in the breeze. The applause was taken up by more of the crowd and again Patrick waved. Perhaps the prank had been successful enough for him to escape the whipping he knew he well deserved. Perhaps not. He did not care. Jessica was smiling at him, wagging a playfully admonishing finger. He did not look at Maria.
* * *
They left that afternoon for London, where they were to spend a few days before starting off on the adventure of the longer trip through France and Switzerland to Italy. There were some tears shed, and some shaken heads. There were quietly-spoken predictions that the young people would be home where they belonged well before the end of the year. There were a few who watched in envy. Jessica, dressed elegantly in dove-grey and fawn travelling suit, her face aching from her constant smile, waited by the carriage as Robert fought his way through a back-slapping and hand-shaking crowd to her side. The steps of the house were crowded with family and friends; behind them were ranged the servants, from the steward and the butler to the smallest maid. Jessica, lifting her hand for a special wave, saw tears on poor Lucy’s face and for the first time found herself swallowing frantically against an enormous lump in her throat.
‘One more kiss! One more kiss!’
Rice flew, and flowers.
‘One more kiss!’
She lifted her face. Awkwardly, his own face fiery, Robert bent and pressed his mouth to hers. And with shock she felt, through the contact of her hand on his arm, how his body flinched from hers.
Smiling gaily she climbed into the carriage and settled herself in the far corner. Robert sat beside her, a foot’s distance between them. After a second, tentatively, he reached out a hand and after only a moment’s hesitation she took it.
And so they sat, like well-mannered children at a party, their hands linked on the seat beside them as to cheers the carriage rolled off down the drive, the horseshoes that Patrick and the stable-lads had tied to the rear axle spinning and clattering behind them.
Part Three
1817–1823
Chapter Nine
The mules stood like statues, patient as time in the blazing sun. The Appenine air shimmered with heat. In the hazed distance of the green and golden vale of the Arno the terracotta roofs and gleaming domes of Florence nestled within their surrounding walls.
Jessica breathed the scented and dusty air and fixed her eyes, narrowed against the brilliant light, upon the distant city.
‘—the view of Florence, with the surrounding hills and the houses dispersed on them, would be counted by many as unparalleled—’
If she had ever doubted, at this moment those doubts were put to rest; so far as she could see, those that would describe it so had been right. In the past three months she had ridden through the flatly fertile fields of Belgium and visited the fairy castles of the Rhein, she had walked the flowery mountains of Switzerland and the verdant tracks of the Austrian Tyrol. She had seen Bruges and Brussels, Strasburg, Munich and Vienna and had wondered at them all. Yet this first sight of the city that she had dreamed about for so long and travelled so far to see could not have struck her with more freshness or force had she been transported here by magic, with no comparisons to make.
The last couple of weeks had been, perhaps, the most tiring of the trip, and for more reasons than the obvious. It had taken eight days to travel the 300 miles from Vienna to Trieste, travelling in a well-sprung but tediously ponderous diligence that had skirted through the foothills of the distant mountain ranges to the shores of the Adriatic Sea. As they had descended the hills into the town she had seen for the first time the lush colours and vegetation of a warmer climate; dark cypress trees and silver-pale olives, fig and peach trees, stony slopes of broad-leafed vines. The Adriatic, a silvered, almost waveless mirror to the blue sky, had startled her as much as anything she had ever seen, so different was it from the rough grey northern seas that were all she knew.
They had stayed a couple of days in the busy commercial town before taking a barque to Venice – a coasting vessel that plied between the two ports carrying goods and, of secondary importance, passengers. The accommodation had been adequate but basic, and the trip made difficult by a sudden squall that had to his chagrin reduced Robert to wretched seasickness. In Venice the weather had been unseasonably cold and by now, with their goal almost in sight they had been anxious, each for their own reasons, to push on. Yet they had been reluctant to bypass such a famous place altogether, so for two days under grey skies, huddled into greatcoats and scarves they had explored the canals and tiny, winding streets, the palaces and churches, were astounded by the almost wanton profusion of precious things the decaying city held – like an old, old woman, Jessica had thought, hoarding her treasures in a dilapidated house where in the darkest corners the brightest masterpieces might be discovered.
On the day they had left the city heading for Padua the fickle sun had reappeared, and had shed its golden southern warmth on the rest of the journey. The voyage across the lagoon from Venice had been leisurely, the cruise up the canal to Padua, the boat now drawn by patiently plodding horses, uneventful. The banks had glided by, picturesque with pretty villages and villas. Bare-legged, brown-skinned children had raced gaily to the riverside to wave. From Padua, using coaches driven by that tough breed of men known as the ‘vetturini’ they had travelled across the flat and fertile valley of the Po via Verona, Mant
ua and Modena, and thence to Bologna, where the horses had been exchanged for mules and they had set off into the towering and beautiful Appenines for the last stage of their journey. The past night had been spent at a mountain inn famous neither for its food nor its comfort but rather as being the scene of the particularly gruesome murders of several travellers some years before. Annabel Romsey, a travelling companion ever since Vienna, had delightedly declared it quite the most barbarous place she had ever encountered and had chattered about it constantly and with shattering single-mindedness ever since. Standing here on the sunlit heights that overlooked the domes and spires of Florence the subject still engaged her.
‘—one would think, truly, that they might improve such facilities, now that Europe is at peace and so many English are travelling – it’s quite outrageous that civilized people should have to contend with such squalor! Whatever were the French doing all the time they were here, do you think? Quite the least they might have done might have been to make travelling these mountains more agreeable—’
Jessica shut her ears and her mind to the light and pretty voice, as she did to the assenting and solicitous murmur that she knew it would inevitably produce from David, Annabel’s very new, young and besottedly devoted husband. She moved away a little further from the group – Annabel, David and Robert – and to the crumbling edge of the road. From the arid-looking, sunbaked ground tiny-flowered herbs sprang in amazing, shrub-like profusion, perfuming the air. In the still mountain silence the sound of the bees busy at the flowers was loud. No bird sang. The city shimmered, waiting, in the distance.
Behind her the vetturino grumbled in scolding tones to his mules, who shifted a little, and the heavy coach’s wheels cracked on the stones of the road. Over these past weeks she had stood so in many strange places, heard many such sounds, strange to her ears and exciting because of that, seen many such beautiful sights, and had, until Vienna, loved it all.
Until Vienna.
‘—I’m absolutely certain that I’ve been bitten by something beastly. David, darling – is there not a patch on my cheek? I shall be mortified if there is—’
David laughed, indulgently, ‘No, no, my love. Truly not, believe me. Your pretty little face is sweet as ever—’
Jessica flinched. Did they have to talk to each other like characters in one of the worst of Caroline’s insipid romantic novels?
‘Good heavens, Jessica dear—!’ Annabel had raised her voice a little. ‘Whatever are you doing over there and without your parasol? You silly thing! You’ll die of sunstroke! To say nothing at all of ruining your complexion!’
Robert leaned into the coach, then came towards her, neat and elegant as ever despite the intense heat, stepping quietly over the rutted road carrying her parasol. ‘She’s right, Jessie. You really must be careful. This isn’t the sun of a summer’s day in Suffolk.’ His voice was meticulously courteous and sounded, in her ears at least, as distant as the city upon which she gazed. Their fingers did not touch as she took the parasol from his hand. She found herself thinking, briefly, of their laughter on the Dover packet when the wind had taken his hat, of the smothered, childish giggles when in Bruges they had totally mistranslated a menu and had to struggle through an enormous meal they had not intended to order. Oh, yes – there had been laughter at first, and warmth, something more than the careful good manners they now both devotedly employed and which, admirably as it fooled the world, did nothing to disguise for themselves how disastrously their relationship had changed.
Since Vienna.
‘Well—’ David was jocular, ‘—are we going to stand here all day looking at the place or are we going to get on down there?’ He put a hand to his ear in an exaggerated listening pose. ‘I hear the call of a good meal and a very large, very cool bottle of vino!’
‘Oh, you!’ Annabel pushed him, squealing like a child with laughter. ‘What a beast you are! You think of nothing but your stomach! Well—’ she convulsed into sudden giggles almost nothing!’
Jessica turned away abruptly. If only – if only! – they had never met these two! If only they had never gone near Vienna!
She clambered into the close atmosphere of the rocking coach, hampered by her long, clinging skirt, suddenly aware of the oppressive heat and of the sweat that uncomfortably slicked her body. As she settled into her corner the sun glinted through the drawn blind, striking into her eyes, dazzling her with a rainbow prism of colour. She closed her eyes, drawing a long breath. No. To blame these two was not fair. If it had not been Annabel and David Romsey, it would have been, sooner or later, someone else. If it had not happened in Vienna, it would have happened, sooner or later, somewhere else. Why hadn’t she known that?
Giggling and teasing, Annabel and David settled themselves opposite her, their hands linked upon the seat between them. Robert, having seen everyone and everything safely stowed aboard, neatly followed them, slammed the door crisply shut and settled collectedly in the other corner, as far from Jessica as space would allow.
The driver yelled, the whip cracked, and the coach, lurching, started down the mountain road.
* * *
They had met the Romseys on the famous rampart walk of Vienna, and the meeting at first had seemed fortuitous to them all. The month had been June, and the weather had been kind. Jessica and Robert had found themselves enchanted both by the city and by its people. The journey until then had been every bit as exciting and as pleasurable as they had dared to hope. They planned now to stop for a week, or perhaps two, to catch their breath and to experience the pleasures of a city that could well be counted as one of the gayest in Europe. Their guesthouse was situated in a small square not far from the ramparts. In the tree-shaded platz a tiny, elaborate bandstand stood, and each evening the promenaders were treated to the light and lilting music of Vienna. As in every other square and boulevard of the city there were pavement cafes serving coffee and chocolate as well as more intoxicating beverages, and specializing in the creamiest and most delicious confections that Jessica had ever seen, let alone tasted. They visited the inevitable museums and art galleries, they strolled the boulevards and parks, and each day, late in the afternoon, they walked the ramparts, as did most of the rest of Vienna, enjoying the cooling breezes and admiring from the high vantage point the splendid buildings and neatly patterned, colourful gardens of the city.
It was on one such walk that Robert, with commendable presence of mind, trapped a gaily-flowered straw hat that was bowling at a merry pace towards the steep drop of the rampart wall.
‘I say! Thanks awfully! I’d never have got to it!’
They both turned in surprise at the pleasant and extremely English tones.
‘Er – vielen dank—’ the young man stammered, grinning. He was tall and fairish with regular features, flushed now with the exertion of chasing the hat. His clothes were well-cut and he carried a gold-topped cane. Hurrying behind him came an extremely pretty girl, trim in pink and white muslin, her dark head hatless and her equally dark eyes alight with laughter.
‘Oh, how priceless! I knew I should have put a pin in it! Thank you!’ she directed a sparkling smile at Robert. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the words in German,’ she added with blithe and somehow endearingly absurd honesty.
Robert smiled, and bowed, handing the hat. ‘Think nothing of it. Neither do I.’
They stared at him. Jessica giggled. The girl in pink lifted an astonished and laughingly accusing finger, ‘You’re English!’
‘—as boiled mutton,’ Robert agreed, solemnly.
The young man thought about that for a moment, then threw back his head in laughter. ‘You’ve been to France—’
‘Belgium, actually.’
‘—where everyone thinks—’
‘—that the English eat nothing but boiled mutton—’
‘—and drink nothing but bad beer!’
‘Quite.’
Smiling, each pair looked at the other for a moment, delighting in the unexpected an
d slightly silly pleasure of the moment. Then the young man bowed a little, gracefully. ‘David Romsey,’ he said. ‘And this—’ disarmingly he blushed faintly, and the girl, nibbling her lip in sudden shyness, dropped her eyes, ‘—is my wife, Annabel.’ As he said it his eyes were drawn as if by a magnet to the flower-face that lifted smiling to his. Unexpectedly Jessica, watching them, felt an odd tightening in her chest, a strange small stab of something remarkably like physical pain, that constricted her heart and interrupted the rhythm of her breathing. She had never seen two people look at each other so openly and unreservedly. They exuded love, it tangled them like the gay ribbons of the Maypole, its bright patterns weaving about them in some way that was like a magic shield against the rest of the world. For no good reason she found the warm intimacy of that look painfully disturbing. She slipped a hand through Robert’s arm.
‘I’m Robert FitzBolton,’ Robert said. ‘This is my wife, Jessica.’
They murmured their ‘How d’ye do’s’. Then, ‘You’re staying in Vienna?’ David asked.
Robert nodded. ‘At the Brathoven Guesthouse.’ He pointed to where the roof could be seen through the trees, ‘Over there, in the Konigsplatz.’
Annabel, in the graceful act of putting on her retrieved bonnet, let out a small shriek of astonishment. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘We’re there, too,’ David said. ‘What an amazing coincidence!’
‘It couldn’t be—’ Jessica asked, laughing, ‘that you’re following Mr Blenkinsop’s excellent itinerary from Travels in Euxope?’
‘The very same!’
They all laughed.
‘The mystery is solved,’ Robert said. ‘Who could travel Europe without trusty Blenkinsop?’
‘David calls it “The Honey-Moon Book”,’ Annabel confided, giggling infectiously, ‘for truly we’ve met so many other newly-wedded couples in the hotels we’ve stayed at—’ She stopped and looked, innocent-eyed, from Robert to Jessica.
The Hawthorne Heritage Page 25