by Abigail Agar
‘I’m not sure I am such a princess’ type,’ said Vera thinking about the possibilities of physical combat with His Lordship. Of wrestling, and of being overpowered …
‘What sort of girl would you be for?’ asked Helen.
‘I don’t know, Helen. One as rich as His Lordship and as pretty as you.’
More like as pretty as his Lordship.
Helen blushed a little and smiled at the compliment, then with a little awkwardness in her voice: ‘Everyone knows they are right about the East Wing, of course. You’ll have to make your own mind up. Only Mr Caruthers claims not to know what’s behind all those doors, so I think he’s the only one who really truly does know.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. He must do. He is also the only person in Lord Stanley’s employ who was here before the locks were turned. Even Eli, who is much older than Methuselah, was hired after the old Lord Stanley died. So Caruthers is probably the man who was tasked with burying the body, or feeding the princess, or sewing gold into all the upholstery.’ She giggled a little at that. ‘Can you imagine him with a needle and thread and all those coins.’
She laughed beautifully, and Vera had sat still, simply playing on in silence for a little. Helen hummed to the tune with her eyes closed, leaning against Vera on the piano stool in a way that made Vera feel as if a sisterly bond were developing despite her own appearances of masculinity.
As Vera allowed what Helen had said to sink in, she couldn’t help feeling it all had an air of Gothic mystery about it. Like something out of Horace Walpole or Ann Radcliffe.
Eventually, Vera asked: ’Have you never got curious and sneaked in?’
‘I’ve got curious, but everyone’s entitled to their secrets and their foibles. I have a secret that I shouldn’t like dug up before the time was right. I think Caruthers does too. I don’t pry when I think it might hurt someone to do so. Even someone so wicked as to kidnap a princess.’
‘Helen, my dear. You are an incorrigible gossip, I do not believe for a moment that you believe in respecting a person’s secrets. Nor do I believe you have never shared your own.’
‘You would be wrong, Mr Fielding. Not everything someone doesn’t want said is a real secret. Cook and Eli are in love; they think no one knows, but that’s not a secret. But whatever is in the East Wing … that would be a hurtful privacy to break. There is a vast difference.’
Vera played a few more chords. ‘You are not nearly so simple a girl as you pretend to be. Are you, Helen?’
‘Simple, indeed! You wouldn’t understand; Men are all brutes. No woman is simple, even those like me who seem plain and practical. We all hide our little hurts.’
‘Then I will not pry into your secret, Helen.’
Helen stood up and stretched her arms. ‘I really should get back to work. Mr Caruthers would be quite furious if he knew I was wasting time entertaining you. Farewell, Fidel.’
‘Farewell, Helen.’
Helen half skipped to the door, still humming the hymn Vera was playing. At the door she turned back and called out. ‘I wish you would, Fidel.’
‘Would what?’ replied Vera.
‘Would ask about my secret.’
Then she slipped through the door leaving Vera to ponder the mystery of the East Wing and of Helen.
***
So it was that Vera steeled herself at the door of Lord Stanley’s room. She felt the cold handle of the door bite into her hand, turned it, and stepped forward into the room that she increasingly saw as the sanctum sanctorum of her own personal devotional religion. She was determined to raise the courage to ask him what it was he kept hidden and feared so greatly.
Lord Stanley was already up and had poured himself a glass of claret from the bottle which had been left warming by the fire the night before. He stood in his nightshirt pacing with wine in one hand and a volume of mathematics in the other.
Vera recognised it as one that she had been reading, and all thought of the East Wing vanished. Until now she had kept her reading a secret as she was unsure if permission would be granted to conduct her raids on the Avon Manse’s library. Fearing denial she simply did not ask.
I must have left it behind last night, she thought, cursing her carelessness.
It had been hidden under her coat, but she had clearly forgotten it after the late night – Lord Stanley had wanted company, and they had stayed up late talking of nothing and everything into the small hours of the night.
These conversations seemed the moments when he was most himself. He seemed to treat Fidel as an equal, and Vera could almost imagine she was her old self and they were wooing in the drawing room. Clearly the intimacy of the evening had made her careless with her book.
She waited a long time for him to speak. When he did so, he had a frown on his face that suggested not the anger Vera expected, but the working of his mind. He was confused by something, or curious.
‘Are you reading this, Fidel?’
‘Yes, sir. I hope that is okay.’
‘It is okay.’ Relief washed over her. ‘It is no problem at all; someone should make use of the library beyond the sensational literature.’
With a smile on her lips she started to go about the process of laying out his lordship’s clothes for the day and warming them before the fire.
‘However,’ he said, with the frown still wrinkling his lips. ‘I am a little surprised by your progress. This book is written almost entirely in Greek. Are you sure you are a relative of old Fielding’s? He doesn’t seem like educated stock.’
‘Do all Lords assume that the lower classes are incapable of learning? The church schools can turn out as good a reader as a tutor if the child is smart.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. But Greek and Mathematics are not a typical part of a church school education. Are you some Napoleonic spy or illegitimate royal? What is the mystery of Fidel?’
Vera saw her opportunity. ‘I have told you my story; my mother was a governess and learned me plenty. Once I could read, all I needed was books and I could teach myself. There is no secret or mystery to Fidel. Though Your Lordship seems to collect mysteries about himself as a matter of course.’
‘You mean the East Wing?’
‘I mean the Bacchanalian socialite who lives almost completely alone, the man who befriends his servant and yet can’t believe they might aspire to education, to wisdom. The East Wing is just one facet of the mystery that gathers around you.’
‘Well, one day I will explain the East Wing to you. It’s not so dark or strange a secret as people say. The truth is …’
He leaned forward and beckoned for Vera to come closer. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Lord Stanley placed one gentle hand on her shoulder and pulled her so close she could feel his breath on her face, the sweet smell of the claret clouding her mind. There was a dark wine stain on his lips, and she longed then and there to draw closer and meet his lips with hers.
‘… the truth, Fidel, is that the East Wing is closed up because I am one man in a massive house, and Caruthers was getting very tetchy about dusting that whole wing.’
Vera wanted to cry; she had felt so sure he was going to confide in her, that they would have shared the little secret. Instead, he was mocking her. It hurt – he had opened up a rift between them just as she thought he might build a bridge.
She stepped back, trying to control her voice. ‘Speaking of Mister Caruthers, I must help him with …’ but words failed her excuses, and feeling a dangerously effeminate wavering in her voice she turned and ran, leaving a bemused Lord Stanley behind her to dress himself.
Chapter 9
The day of the ball got off to an inauspicious start. The dawn was blood red at Vera’s window.
Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning, she thought.
Sure enough, by midday there were storm clouds gathering over the hills, and the levels in the river at the bottom of the garden were rising in response to the fall of rain behind the horizo
n.
Vera was kept on hand by Lord Stanley almost the entire day. His tailor, a hunchbacked old man with unpainted wooden teeth, had brought an entirely new wardrobe for Lord Stanley, who was like a young boy playing dress up.
The suits were brought up to Lord Stanley’s chambers and laid out on the bed in neat rows. Vera stood by to help him into an endless array of trousers in all the exotic patterns the new textile industries of Great Britain could produce.
These were coupled with suits which seemed to take as their source watercolour illustrations of the fops of the previous century with a quite startling array of lace and pleats. The uglier the combination, the more Lord Stanley seemed to delight both in his tailor’s admiration and Vera’s approbation.
‘Perhaps you should try the maroon again,’ Vera suggested trying to talk him out of a startling sky blue jacket with military style tassels and a pair of britches with black and grey stripes which she had to admit were very flattering to his Lordships legs, but which all in all made him appear more like a harlequin than a host.
He tried the maroon again, which despite its unusual colour was rather flattering and paired with trousers in the same colour seemed to satisfy Lord Stanley’s desire to appear flamboyant without tipping over into the tasteless.
‘Very good, sir,’ she said as she smoothed the cloth in the shoulders, feeling the softness of skin and the hardness of the muscle beneath her grip. She reached around to do up the bright and overlarge gold buttons, savouring the closeness, the warmth of his body.
Lord Stanley’s mood seemed to have changed with the clothes; he seemed happier, cheerful even; his cares seemed to drop away.
He stepped forward and spun in front of the semi-circle of dress mirrors and brought his feet together with a click, arms out as if ending a particularly complex dance.
He bowed to himself in the mirror, and with a suggestive drawl in his voice, he said, ‘Lord Stanley my dear, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.’ Then he turned to the tailor. ‘Yes, this is the one for this evening. But I will keep the striped trousers, whatever my trusted Fidel says regarding their effect on the eyes. Now, you know where to find Caruthers, he’ll settle the bill and put you somewhere comfortable until the party begins.’
Outside the window there was the white flash of lightning. Faking terror, Lord Stanley seized Vera and spun her to the window ducking behind her. ‘God knows my sins! He is coming to stop them.’ He chuckled at his own joke, which left Vera bewildered. The clap hit a long and distant rumble that spoke of great violence still far off but closing in.
His Lordship seemed oddly euphoric.
This explains why he throws so many balls, Vera thought, wondering at the change in him. He appears as a child before Christmas.
He was rushing around the room, opening a book and reading a few lines to himself then bounding back around the bed and stoking the fire.
‘Perhaps you would like to choose a suit, Fidel. You would look most fetching in light blue, my boy. Share a drink with me.’
There was something off putting in his behaviour, a lack of sincerity that made Vera think of rather poor actors on the stage. She excused herself:
‘Thank you, sir, but if you are prepared, I must see Mister Caruthers about my duties for the evening.’
‘Very well, Fidel. But you must promise to enjoy yourself this evening; take that Helen for a dance. It scandalises the great and good to find servants dancing in their midst.’
‘Whatever you command, My Lord.’
Vera backed out of the room quickly hoping that his almost drunken euphoria wouldn’t drag her back in. She liked to see him cheerful, but this seemed almost febrile in its intensity and made her worried about the scene he might play tonight.
***
Caruthers was sharing a bottle of ale with the tailor when Vera arrived in the kitchen a few minutes later. He too seemed intoxicated with the mood of the coming party, or perhaps that was just the ale.
The two men were laughing at a bawdy joke about the thunder and lightning just as she arrived, and ignoring the uncouthness of the joke, Vera stood at the end of the table and coughed to announce her presence.
‘What do you need of me?’ asked Vera.
‘Oh, Fidel! What a question? Come sit with me and drink an ale.’
Clearly this madness is catching.
He seemed almost to be doing an impression of his master’s strange over-cheerfulness.
‘I should keep a clear head–’ began Vera but was cut off as both men began laughing heartily and banging their fists on the table.
‘My dear boy,’ said Caruthers. ‘This evening will be an education for you.’ There was a wryness to Caruthers’ humour that suggested he might not be quite as happy with the situation as he was letting on.
‘Our Lordship is on a crusade to make his name the most loathed in all high society. The attendees have either come for a debauch that they can blame on Lord Stanley’s influence or else to be appalled by the horrifying display of Sybaritic vice. He thinks himself a latter day John Wilmot.’ The smile on Caruthers’ face barely masked his disgust. ‘And while he plays his filthy part, we are all accomplices. For the love I bear his father I remain here and play my part in this degradation. The poor foolish boy.’
His head dropped to the ale cup, and Vera moved quietly to the door.
What the hell have I got myself into?
Was this then the man she was in love with? Was he really just as debauched as the rumours said?
The evening stretched out before her, a sinister and shadowy unknown, and at the window of her room she could see the first spots of rain hitting the glass.
***
The guests arrived first in dribs and drabs, then in a long stream of coaches that appeared from the dark of the driveway, their lanterns turning the rain into a flickering halo.
Lord Stanley was in the entrance hall to greet every single one with a wide smile and theatrical hospitality. His energy didn’t seem to fade, and he knew every person by name.
He is indeed a different man, Vera thought casting her mind back to his assurances. But still it felt odd.
Vera stood beside him, one arm aching under the silver platter on which a tobacco box, pipe, and spills sat along with a decanted bottle of claret which Lord Stanley was drinking from directly without a glass.
Vera was struggling still to make sense of all this. I’ve never seen him take so much as a pinch of snuff, and now he’s puffing on a pipe like a common farmer.
She stood there watching the parade of arrivals, the muscles in her arms burning as the queue went on and on under the huge chandelier that hung between the gilded double staircases of the entry hall.
Lord Stanley shook every man’s hand and kissed their wives on the hand. The unmarried women, he kissed on the cheek; in one old Dowager’s case, kissing her firmly on the mouth.
‘You incorrigible young bastard,’ she said while laughing at his shocking behaviour. ‘You make me feel young again. Do come and find me when you are done greeting all these youths.’
Any other man would have been struck for that, but they just laugh at Lord Stanley.
The old dowager was one of the last of the main stream of guests. After she had ushered herself through to the ballroom, the arrivals began to thin out.
‘Fidel,’ said Lord Stanley during a quiet moment. ‘It is time to join the party, I think.’ His voice was the easy, thoughtful voice of the Lord Stanley she had loved, but with some effort he seemed to reconstitute himself around the new persona: the life of the party.