The Summer Fields

  ‘The Knights of St Sebastian?’

  Ned leans on the rail, pushing a handful of hair from his face. ‘It is a group of important men who come from the four corners of Europe to gather here. They have politics and government in common with the earl.’

  ‘That sounds wearisome.’

  ‘Oh, they are not the dull lot you would imagine.’ He climbs a step nearer to her and wraps his arm around the heavy carving on top of the newel post. ‘They enjoy a fine dinner and good company.’

  ‘Duntisbourne is a long way to come, particularly in these winter months. Why on earth do they not meet in London?’

  ‘They would, but the Queen leads a pious life, and expects her politicians to do the same.’ The fingers of his other hand begin to trace the head of the lion, following the curve of its mane, the contours of the tongue that projects from the wooden muzzle. ‘What you and I would regard as natural high spirits, the Queen sees as licentiousness.’

  ‘Is that so?’ She feels a frisson of excitement to know someone who understands life at Court.

  ‘It is. Any politician brought to her attention for immoral behaviour pays the price. She listens to her favourites at Court. A word from one of them has ended many a career.’

  ‘You seem to know a great deal about it.’

  ‘I do. The earl often takes me into his confidence.’ A slight cloud comes across Ned’s face and with sudden seriousness he adds, ‘As I am taking you into mine.’

  ‘But none of this is secret, surely?’

  Ned shifts his weight, looks away from her, studying the carved lion’s head. ‘Of course not, not really, but I would be grateful if you didn’t go tittle-tattling to the good doctor about it,’ he says.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I told you, the earl and his friends have to be careful that gossip about their merry making doesn’t reach Court. I’m sure the doctor would disapprove of their gaiety.’

  ‘Would he? He seems an open-minded man.’

  ‘Oh, you know these medical men. If something’s fun, it’s unquestionably bad for you.’

  Elen frowns at him. ‘With all this preparation,’ she says, ‘Dr Argyll is bound to see something is afoot, is he not?’ She nods at the industry in the hall beneath them. ‘He already knows the earl is returning this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, but the doctor will assume it is to be a general dinner. I simply meant it would be better if you didn’t mention the Knights of St Sebastian. When they have their special dinner in a few days’ time, they dine late, long after the doctor has concluded his evening visit.’ Ned gives her a swift smile. ‘Anyway, I must get back downstairs or that lazy crew will slither away and I will never find them again.’

  He starts off down the staircase but pauses and turns. ‘Actually,’ he says, ‘perhaps I have been a little indiscreet. It really would be better for me if you didn’t talk about this to the doctor or to the viscount for that matter.’

  ‘The viscount? Has he not attended these dinners in the past?’

  ‘No. Politics has never interested him, much to the disappointment of his father.’ Ned reaches up the bannister until his fingers meet with hers. His look is intense and open again. ‘I think I have been a little foolish.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I could not quite resist bragging to you, I suppose.’

  His expression is so appealing it makes her smile. ‘You are proud to have the ear of the earl?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And so you should be. Of course I won’t pass on what you have told me.’

  ‘Bless you.’

  He hurries back down, turns at the foot of the stairs, touching his fingers on his lips and throws a kiss up to her.

  * * *

  Mordiford is in the same position as when she left the sickroom, propped up on a bank of pillows. He shifts restlessly, working his hands behind his back. Talk of the Knights’ Order makes her think that Mordiford looks like the suffering martyr of St Sebastian, his hands pinioned behind him, his muscles straining against his bonds, his skin pierced with arrows. She has the fanciful thought that she is to be his St Irene, the woman who had the courage to draw each arrow from the martyr’s flesh and nurse him back to health. Cautiously she approaches the bed.

  ‘Do you think you will be able to manage a little luncheon later on, sir?’ she says.

  Mordiford moves his head weakly from side to side, his eyes closed. She comes nearer and lays the back of her hand on his forehead to gauge his fever. Even though her fingers are chilled from her time on the gallery, his skin feels a deal hotter than the last time she felt it. Her carefree conversations of the past half hour have made her forget how vital his recovery is to her and her family.

  A terrible anxiety sweeps through her, a realisation that in the half hour she has been gone, he has deteriorated rapidly. How can that be? Has squabbling and fighting with the doctor worn him out or are these swings from lucidity to confusion part of the disease.

  ‘Can you hear me, my lord?’

  He rolls his head towards her and opens his eyes. He stares at her face but doesn’t seem to see her, as if he is looking through her head to the wall beyond. His forehead puckers as much as the swelling allows. His eyes focus on her and he gives her such a look, that a terrible fear grips her heart as if she is about to lose Mordiford.

  ‘What troubles you, my lord?’ she says, desperately trying to keep a fearful tone from her voice.

  Mordiford draws his parched lip between his teeth. ‘I know not,’ he says.

  ‘How does the skin feel across your chest?’

  ‘I cannot stand to touch it. The pain in my back is so fierce. Your hands are cold. Cold as the grave. Have pity on me. Lay your iced fingers on me, I beg you.’

  Elen hesitates, but he seems to be in such discomfort, she draws the pillows out from behind his head and rolls him onto his side. She sees his crusted fingers working at his spine. She gently lifts his hand aside and lays her hands on the base of his back through the fabric of his bed shirt.

  ‘I beg you, lay your hands on my skin,’ he says, his voice muffled by the bedding. ‘Or is my flesh too hideous for you to touch?’

  ‘No, sir,’ she says. She doubts he will recall these ramblings should he recover and she has, after all, been privy to far more degrading moments with him during their short acquaintance. Even so, before she pulls the bed shirt free, she draws the coverlet up to his waist to protect his modesty and preserve her own. It is one thing to steady him upon the commode, quite another to gaze down on him as he lies naked from the waist down.

  Within a few minutes her hands have taken on the heat of his back. She slides the bed shirt back into place. Mordiford stirs but does not move. Very gently she draws his hair aside to study the skin on the back of his neck. The pocks are joining, much as the doctor feared.

  She knows he is sickening fast, but is unsure of what to do. She needs the doctor’s opinion. She thinks of quitting the room and calling down to Ned in the hall to fetch him with all haste but knows it is foolish to panic. She must hold her nerve and stay with her patient.

  She busies herself tidying, stoking the fire and scattering a fresh scoopful of earth over the contents of the commode. Her mind cannot rest. When she can find no further tasks, she washes her hands in the ewer, opens the door into the stairwell and listens out to see if she can hear the doctor’s approach. She cannot.

  She sits down in a chair beside her patient. His breathing comes in swift, shallow pants. She whispers, ‘Viscount Mordiford?’ He does not stir. She watches him as if the strength of her concentration will keep him from slipping deeper into sickness.

  The doctor had said Mordiford would begin to rally once the scabs began to form. This morning it seemed to be true. Now he is sicker than ever. She cannot imagine how uncomfortable he must feel. In the silence of the room, her mind leaps from worry to catastrophe. Fresh anxieties cram into her head. The doctor may be her staunch defender, but if Mordiford dies, no a
mount of championing from him will save her father’s livelihood from the earl’s wrath. What then would happen to Rhodri, Libby, Marc and her little sister Judy if the family lose their living and their home? The earl is the only employer for leagues around and without his beneficence, the Griffiths family would be destitute.

  Finally, she hears the gallery door. She leaves her seat beside the sick bed and hurries over to the staircase. Yes, she can hear someone coming, the steady footsteps of the doctor and another climbing behind him. It will be Joan. But Mordiford is too sick to be left with Joan.

  ‘Dr Argyll,’ she says. The doctor stands on the threshold, turning to start back down. Joan shrinks in around him and scuttles across the room to her usual spot.

  ‘Miss Griffiths,’ the doctor says. ‘You must come now. We have been summoned by the earl. He is most eager to meet you.’

  ‘No, sir. Before we go down I urge you to…’

  ‘Come on, off with that apron. Right now. You cannot afford to keep the earl waiting.’

  ‘Sir, I beg you, would you please take a look at the viscount?’

  ‘Later. Hurry now.’ The doctor starts down the stairs, disappearing from sight before she can persuade him further.

  She unties her apron, flings it down, shoots a look at Joan who hasn’t even glanced at the patient. Elen opens her mouth to urge her to be vigilant but knows it is useless. Instead she follows the doctor. When she reaches the gallery she calls out to him, ‘A moment, sir. I beg you.’

  The urgency of her appeal stops him and he turns. ‘Can it not wait? The earl is expecting us.’

  ‘I am sure it cannot.’

  The doctor pauses. ‘Very well, but be quick.’

  ‘It is the viscount. Although he seemed alert this morning, he has been sickening all afternoon.’

  The doctor takes a deep breath and says, ‘And I did not have time to take a look at him just now.’ He pushes his fingers beneath his periwig and scratches the top of his forehead. ‘Come, let me have your fears.’

  ‘He complains of aching all down his back.’

  ‘Ah, that should have passed by now.’

  ‘And I noticed that many of the pocks are joining together and forming scabs, some as large as pennies.’

  ‘Usually scabbing heralds an improvement.’ The doctor knits his brows and pulls at his lower lip.

  ‘These have lifted free of the skin,’ Elen says, ‘and have formed ulcers around their edges.’

  ‘This is bad, very bad indeed.’ The doctor takes a few paces away from her, his head bent, his hands folded behind his back. He retraces his steps and says, ‘Let us despatch our duty with the earl with as much haste as possible. Twenty minutes will make little difference to that poor wretch upstairs. We’ll go down through the private apartments. It will be quicker that way.’

  * * *

  Elen follows the doctor down the short passage, but before he opens the oak door he says, ‘I need to think further on this. Until I have assessed the situation, we will tell the earl that his son is making good progress.’

  ‘But he is not.’

  ‘There will be no benefit in alarming his father at this stage. The earl is an unpredictable man with a muscular temper. The very last thing I want is for him to send for some physician from London.’

  They hurry along the passage, past the sketch where they stood a short while ago and into a wider upstairs corridor, thickly carpeted. Quantities of fabric cover the walls and swathe the large window at the end, which frames a panorama of wet trees.

  After the stark stone and wooden floorboards of the sickroom, the colours seem to stretch her eyes: rich swags of burgundy scrolled with golden threads, festoons of brilliant blue, brighter than the feathers of a peacock, tassels of acid yellow, singing against braids of emerald green.

  As she tries to keep pace with the doctor, she glimpses lofty bedrooms, high and faint in the rainy afternoon light. In each stands a magnificent bed swathed densely in silks finer than those at the windows. The hangings are richly decorated with crewel work, the velvet valances stiff with embroidery. In one room, a maid is closing the shutters against the dank and darkening afternoon; in another an under-footman is setting the fire.

  The doctor leads her on to the main staircase, smaller than the one in the great hall, but fine nonetheless. When he begins to descend, she hesitates on the landing and says, ‘Dr Argyll?’

  The doctor stops and turns. ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘Why do you not want a physician brought from London, sir?’

  The doctor narrows his eyes and climbs a step nearer. ‘Miss Griffiths, there is a tang to your question that I do not care for. I have not lost faith in my theories. Perhaps you have.’ He drums his fingers on the bannister as he awaits her answer.

  ‘I only wondered, sir,’ she says, dropping her voice. ‘If a physician at Court would have news of a remedy that has perhaps not reached this far west.’

  The doctor studies the step on which he stands for a moment and then says without looking up, ‘When King Charles lay dying, his physicians bled him of many pints of blood. They made him vomit. They fed him purgatives to clear his bowels. They administered enemas of antimony, rock salt, sacred bitters, beet root, mallow leaves, violet, camomile flowers, aloes, fennel seed, linseed, cardamom seed, cinnamon, saffron and cochineal. They shaved his scalp. They raised blisters. They applied poultices of burgundy pitch and pigeon dung. They tried extract of human skull, slippery elm, black cherry water, dissolved pearls. When he failed to rally, they forced ammonia down his throat and powdered bezoar stone. After a night of this first-rate treatment by the best physicians in the land, the king, by now utterly exhausted, died.’ Dr Argyll leans towards her and, from his lower step, looks up into her face, his left eyebrow raised to emphasise his point. ‘I would never let pride come between myself and the survival of my patient,’ he says quietly.

  Elen swallows and looks away. A clock somewhere nearby begins to whirr followed by a crisp and merry chime. In the pause between the chime and the strikes, she knows the doctor stares fixedly at her and she feels ashamed. She counts: one, two, three, four…

  ‘Come,’ the doctor says. ‘We must not keep the earl waiting.’

  They reach the lower landing, the doctor says, ‘Stay here, Miss Griffiths, I will let Mr Antrobus know you are waiting, he will take you down to the smoking room.’

  ‘You are coming with me?’ she says, anxious that she has angered him so much he will abandon her.

  ‘Of course, but we cannot burst in on the earl without being announced.’

  Mr Antrobus appears, hurriedly pulling on his livery and leads them down yet another corridor. Elen watches the shoulders of the doctor as he strides ahead of her. She bitterly regrets speaking out. He is her ally. She cannot afford to lose his good opinion.

  She catches the scent of tobacco drifting in the air. When they reach a set of double doors, Mr Antrobus throws them open and stands silhouetted against the muted light.

  ‘Dr Argyll, my lord – and Miss Griffiths,’ Mr Antrobus says before departing, closing the door soundlessly behind them.

  Chapter 15

  The first thing to strike Elen as she enters the smoking room is the enormous tapestry, covering the opposite wall. The image in the centre makes her catch her breath.

  It shows a voluptuous woman, quite naked, sprawled in an Elysian bower. At first Elen thinks a swan is attacking the woman, but then she sees that the bird has climbed onto her lap, draping himself between her legs, his webbed foot lying delicately across her thigh. The woman’s limbs writhe against the bird but her head bends forward with an expression of studied ecstasy as she takes the swan’s beak between her lips.

  Elen is a country girl and knows more than many of her age and sex that a bird is equipped in much the same way as a man. It leaves her in no doubt that this piece of art is a depiction of a shameless act of lust. The colour rises in her face and she looks down, trying to concentrate instead on th
e elaborate patterns of the rugs, but she cannot help glancing back at the arresting image, dominating the room.

  The earl is sitting in a deep button-backed chair. Elen feels him watching her. She risks a glance at him and wishes she hadn’t. He is smiling most lasciviously. He rises to his feet, changing his expression to one of welcome as the doctor approaches. She moves behind Dr Argyll to stay within his protection.

  ‘Argyll,’ the earl says. ‘Thank you for taking time away from your patient.’

  The earl is a tall man who must have been lithe in his youth, although now he carries too much weight around his middle. He wears an elaborate wig, powdered white, the curls of which tumble across his shoulders and down his back. He is certainly not handsome, yet he is unmistakably refined. He has a long face and high forehead, deeply creased above the eyebrows, which are angled in a perpetual expression of disdain. His long, straight nose is faintly hooked at the tip, giving him the air of a bird of prey and beneath the nose, the lips have a looseness she associates with strong drink. He looks directly at her with the confidence of high station and the doctor steps aside to enable her to come forward.

  ‘May I introduce Miss Griffiths?’ the doctor says.

  ‘Ah, the dairymaid,’ the earl says as she drops him a shallow curtsy. ‘You are a tall thing. All that milk and cheese as a child, I’ll be bound, eh doctor?’ The doctor bows his head to indicate agreement. ‘I understand you work for your father, over at the farm.’

  ‘I do, sir,’ Elen says, lifting her head and looking back at the earl. His eyes are the palest blue, but cold, like a shadow on the snow.

  ‘The doctor tells me we have been most fortunate to have you here. Your departed mother was a governess for Lady Ludlow, was she not?’

  ‘For a very brief while, my lord.’

  ‘I am told she gave up her position because her head was quite turned by one of my stockmen.’ The tip of the earl’s tongue flashes momentarily as he moistens his lips.

  ‘That is the story, my lord,’ she says. She narrows her eyes for she cannot quite read the earl’s expression, but she senses his question has a lewdness to it.