Anne rounded on Geraldine. ‘You speak English?’
Geraldine was tall and had a Norman arrogance about her. Her green eyes had a flinty, contemptuous glitter in them. ‘Bett-er than you, I zink?’
‘You zink.’
Anne advanced on her. I should have moved then, but my urge to do so was overwhelmed by a desire that Anne would say something to wipe the supercilious smile from the face of this woman, whom, I realised with a shock, was my stepmother. It was more than that. It was impossible not to admire Anne’s dogged singlemindedness in the face of these people. It had never struck me before but, just as I tried to challenge their arrogant assumption of power through freedom for the people, in her own way and for very different reasons, was Anne not trying to do exactly the same thing?
The smile left Geraldine’s face when Anne was a step away. Just as it dawned on everyone that, for Anne, it had gone beyond words and she might physically attack Geraldine, a voice rang out.
‘Enough.’ It was the minister. He seemed to realise how disturbed Anne was, for his tone was more gently reproving than hectoring. ‘You seem to have forgotten we are praying for a soul to depart this life in peace.’
Anne stared around her as if waking from a dream. Her gaze rested on the still figure of Lord Stonehouse. She shook with terror, clasping her hands so tightly I thought they would snap. I put my arm gently round her. She blundered into a chair as I began guiding her from the room. Richard began to follow me, saying again he must speak to me, but I gestured him violently away.
A cry rang out, demonic and chilling. It seemed to come from the air itself. Anne screamed and buried her face in my chest. There was a movement, a quivering white shape in the dim, shifting light at the head of the bed, to one side of Lord Stonehouse’s body. Everyone shrank back except Hanmer, who got up to flee, forgetting his gouty foot. He fell back in his chair with an agonised grunt. I was convinced I was seeing, literally, the departure of Lord Stonehouse’s soul from his body. So, it appeared, did Dr Latchford for, losing his fear in the interests of natural philosophy, he scrabbled for his spectacles, squinting excitedly through one cracked lens.
‘We are witnessing,’ he whispered in awe, ‘the transfer of the corporeal to the spiritual.’
The shape sank back, struggled to rise again, then in a sudden blur of movement, shot up. Everyone gasped, ducking their heads away. Peering back, we saw the draught from the movement had swelled the light from the candles. This revealed the spirit was a sheet in which Lord Stonehouse’s hands had been trapped and were thrashing about frantically. His right hand jerked up, knocking the prayer book from the minister’s hands.
‘Horseborne!’ he cried, in a feeble remnant of his old voice.
His eyes remained closed. A servant scrambled to rescue a candle that had been knocked over. There was silence except for Lord Stonehouse’s laboured breathing, like the crackle of dead leaves.
‘Dead child,’ he muttered. He brought up his hand again so abruptly the minister had to duck back. ‘Plague order.’ On his clenched fist I saw the glint of the falcon signet ring before he brought it down, pressing it into the sheets as though he was making an impression in molten wax. His eyes struggled to open, being gummed with some kind of discharge. The servant darted over and wiped them free. Lord Stonehouse pushed him away. His eyes jerked open, fastening accusingly on the minister.
‘No peace … I saw him. A moment ago. The boy. Just now … over there. You promised … he’d go … You’d get rid of him.’ He levered himself from his pillows with a sudden burst of words which echoed his old strength and irritability. ‘The bastard’s still there! What are you people paid for, eh? Your tithes, your rich livings, and you can’t get rid of a wretched boy?’
Spent, he sank back, his eyes closing. The minister put his hand over the still clenched fist of the dying man. ‘Oh Lord, we beg thee to strengthen the inner man, so that before he goes hence –’
He stepped back hastily as the hand thrashed up again, pointing a shaking finger at me. ‘Look! There he is. Look. Throw your words at him!’
‘My lord, he is real.’
‘A real spirit?’ Lord Stonehouse groaned. ‘Then I’m done for, done for.’
I ran forward, past the scandalised minister, and flung my arms round the old man. The stench of putrefying flesh and sweat mingled with the sickly sweet smell of incense and almost overpowered me. ‘I’m here. I’m real … I’m … I’m …’ Threatening tears took me unawares.
‘Real?’ His voice was touched with his old scorn. ‘I want no bastards in this family. Throw him out!’
Richard was touching my arm, Mr Cole hovering on one side and the servant on the other. They hesitated as Lord Stonehouse began speaking again.
‘Real?’ His hand, hot as fire, the skin rustling like parchment, moved over my face, stopping at my hooked nose. ‘Boy’s a Stonehouse,’ he muttered. ‘No doubt. No doubt about that.’
He sat up in a sudden moment of clarity, his eyes shrewd as ever, brooding, as if he had lifted his head from papers on his desk. ‘All here, are you?’ His rusty, faltering breath belied the sharpness in his eyes. ‘Son, daughter-in-law, doctor, lawyer, minister – anyone would think I was dying.’ He choked with laughter at the minister’s shocked expression. An old servant with a bent back held out a potion. His hand was as shaky as his master’s.
‘You should come and join me, Joseph,’ Lord Stonehouse said. He laughed again and took a sip before turning to me. ‘And you. You, sir. Who let you in? Coneyed your way in, did you?’ I could almost swear that his right hand, fumbling in the sheets, was automatically feeling for the third drawer down in his desk, my drawer. ‘You get nothing, do you know that? Nothing.’
I jumped up. ‘I don’t want anything. I never did. However many times I tell you, or anyone else, no one ever believes me!’
He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. ‘Nothing?’
‘You gave me everything I ever wanted when you picked me up in the docks. You gave me a chance.’ I turned to go.
‘Wait.’ A note of incredulity crept into his voice. ‘You mean … you just came … to see me?’
I said nothing. What could I say? How could I destroy that look in his eyes? It was exactly like the first look he ever gave me. The potion he was holding was dribbling on to the sheets. I took it from him. ‘London Treacle,’ he said suddenly. ‘Remember?’
I nodded. London Treacle was the cordial he had given me when he first saw me as a young boy, after I had been burned by pitch at the docks. Everyone else in the room disappeared beyond the soft light of the candles. For an instant we were alone in the Poplar of my childhood, in the shipwright’s cabin, me not knowing whether I was asleep or awake, his eyes troubled one moment and shrewd the next.
‘London Treacle.’ His eyes glistened. ‘Now …’ He began to laugh. He tried to speak but the words were drowned in splutters of laughter. He shook with it so that the whole bed trembled. He began to cough again. I held out the cordial. He took a swallow, spraying most of it on to me. ‘London Treacle. Now you’re giving it to me.’ He pushed the cordial away. ‘Enough!’ He wiped his eyes and blew his nose on a corner of the sheet.
‘Minister! Where is that wretched minister?’
‘Here, my lord.’
‘Did Jesus not say: the first shall be last and the last first?’
‘He did, my lord, but –’
‘Never understood that before, never.’ Colour was seeping back into his pallid cheeks. He heaved himself further up in the bed, wincing, but the pain seemed only to infuriate him into fresh energy. ‘Hanmer. Hanmer! Where is that cozening lawyer?’
The minister bent beseechingly over him. ‘My lord, you are not yourself. You must forsake all earthly things –’
‘Forsake them to the Church, you mean? I was far too generous there. Not myself? I have never been more myself in all my life! More light, more light!’ he shouted to the servant.
The room was in a kind of hushed upr
oar, Hanmer hobbling to his feet, servants rushing for candles, and Dr Latchford staring through his cracked spectacles.
The fresh candles drove back the shadows, picking up the sweat shining on Lord Stonehouse’s face, the feverish exultant gleam in his eyes. ‘Move, Hanmer. We all have gout. We don’t make other people suffer for it. Hurry!’
The minister wrung his hands repeatedly. ‘This is most irregular, illegal, at this time, in front of the family!’
‘On this side of the world, I am the law.’
The minister’s voice hardened. ‘My lord, you are close to your maker.’
‘You prayed for him to raise me up, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, my lord, but –’
‘He has answered your prayer. Mr Cole! Pen. Paper. Move, man! Hanmer!’ His eyes abruptly squeezed together in a spasm of pain, his skin wrinkling up like a decaying apple. Dr Latchford scuttled forward but was stopped by an angry gesture. Nobody moved. The only sound was the laboured rasp of the old man’s breathing. When it had become more regular, he continued as if nothing had happened. ‘Hanmer, that piece of sharp practice …’
Hanmer coughed reprovingly, shooting a nervous glance towards Richard. ‘If you are referring, my lord, to the Parliamentary Ordinance on seized Royalist property, which may be interpreted to mean –’
‘Yes, yes. That one. Dictate.’
One servant placed a small table before Mr Cole, another a quill in his hand, while a third put paper in front of him. Inured to his master’s moods, indeed seeming happy that his employment had not yet been terminated, Mr Cole dipped in the quill and waited expectantly while Hanmer cleared his throat and people inched closer, faces craning, eyes staring.
‘Oh, Tom, Tom,’ Anne softly breathed in my ear. ‘You’ve done it. I knew you would, I knew it!’
‘I –’
I stopped. Nothing I said would make any difference. Nobody would believe I did not want the estate. Nobody. Was it more than that? Of course it was. Colour was returning to Anne’s cheeks. Her eyes were brightening. She was so much the old Anne then, the woman I had fallen in love with, that I gripped her hand impulsively. She returned the pressure.
Even so, when I saw Lord Stonehouse twisting his signet ring, the ring with which he had sealed the plague order and would shortly seal the new will, and caught the flash of the falcon’s eye in the candlelight, I shuddered. I might have stepped forward then and stopped it, but for the word I caught.
Diable.
I knew little French, but I knew that word. Devil. I had had that word flung at me often enough in my time with Mr Black. That, and bastard. Geraldine managed both. She had been throwing up her hands in bewilderment, firing puzzled questions at Richard, which he was too distraught to answer. Half a dozen times Richard looked as if he was about to come over and rip the quill from Mr Cole’s hands. Every time, his father’s cold look stopped him. Hanmer said all previous wills and codicils were revoked.
‘Que veut dire “revoked”?’ Geraldine asked.
‘Révoquer.’
Up to that moment, Geraldine had either not understood, or not believed, what was happening. Her voice was shrill. ‘Incroyable! Ce diable va hériter? Ce bâtard? Il faut l’en empêcher.’
Richard took a couple of steps towards his father. Hanmer stopped dictating. Lord Stonehouse looked up. This time it was not a cold look. Rather it was a weary, ineffably tired look he gave Richard, not without warmth, even love, in so far as Lord Stonehouse had ever been able to express it. He had so often told his son Richard he was not fit to inherit, and there was now a resignation in the father’s gaze, a final lucidity, that suggested he knew exactly what he was doing.
Between Richard and the bed was a strip of carpet, patterned much like that of the worn strip on which we had both stood before him many times. Richard was fearless in war, but that carpet, with that look, was a barrier he could not cross.
‘Seul Dieu,’ he muttered to Geraldine, ‘peut arrêter mon père.’
I managed that French, too. Only God can stop my father. Lord Stonehouse stared not just at me, but into me. It was not merely as if he was scrutinising every part, it was as though he was transferring his very feelings, his burden, to me. Burden. He gave a little nod, as if I had actually spoken the word. In that moment I understood. He knew I did not want the estate. It was for that very reason he was passing it to me. It was not out of perversity. It was because, in the scene played out to him, he had seen that I would not enjoy it, but treat it as a duty, a burden, as he had done.
He seemed to read my thoughts, for he smiled at me. It was one of the very few smiles I ever remember him giving me. I bowed my head. When I lifted it, he was in the act of signalling to Hanmer to continue. His hand froze in mid-gesture. His face crumpled and cracked like parchment, but the cry of pain was soundless. It increased in severity. Richard reached him first, taking one hand, while I took the other. The creases finally eased from his face and his eyes opened.
‘Family gathering … at last,’ he managed with a ghost of a smile. ‘You know … my wishes …’
He gasped. It was as though a great vice had seized him. His body hammered against me as he thrashed up and down like a panic-stricken horse. We caught him as he almost slipped from the bed in his violent movements. His hand with the signet ring clenched repeatedly, then, very slowly, closed. His eyes stared.
Dr Latchford bent over him, then nodded to the minister.
‘Almighty God, now he is delivered from his earthly prison … we humbly commend his soul …’
I was numb, scarcely hearing him, convinced the doctor had made a mistake, that I could see an ironic gleam in those staring eyes. Suddenly I was full of the things that I might say to him that would bring us closer. I still felt the grip, the feverish heat, of his hand in mine, and the nearness of Richard. Family gathering. He had brought us together and that would revive him, I was sure of it. It was his last subterfuge, his final trick.
‘Teach us who survive,’ the minister went on, ‘the lesson of mortality, to see how frail and uncertain we are, so we may forget earthly desires and steadfastly apply our hearts to heavenly things …’
The pages of the will Mr Cole had written fluttered from the table unheeded as the minister stood and bent in prayer. The servants followed him. I felt the closeness of Anne, moving next to me, the closeness of everyone circling the bed. Even Hanmer stood motionless, his gout forgotten. Shadows thrown by the candles flickered over awestruck faces. Geraldine’s fervent ‘Amen’ rang out above the rest. Only when Dr Latchford closed Lord Stonehouse’s eyes did I realise there was no subterfuge, no trick; I would never say the things I meant to say to him, which had a clarity I could never find when he was alive. I flung myself on him, weeping bitterly, uncontrollably. I forgot all the things he had done to me. All I could see was his face when he had picked me up at the docks, his troubled expression. I buried my head in his body, overpowered not by his stench, but by the sweet, syrupy smell of London Treacle. Hands tried to remove me. I clung to him until two servants pulled me away.
The minister gave me a look of distaste. ‘I know what you must feel, my son. But you must reconcile yourself to what you have lost.’
He was looking at the pages of the half-finished will, which Mr Cole was picking up. He thought that was the source of my grief.
Hanmer, whose gouty hobble had returned, shrugged and muttered, ‘Waste paper. Unfinished. Unsigned. Not valid.’
Forgetting all sense of propriety in her eagerness to understand, Geraldine leaned over the corpse to pick up the men’s whispers. ‘C’est quoi “not valid”?’
‘Non valable,’ Richard replied.
Geraldine clasped her hands together exultantly and raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Dieu est Catholique!’
‘Here God is a Protestant, madam,’ the minister cried.
Anne was arguing with Hanmer. ‘I heard him! We all heard him say what his wishes were!’ Hanmer told her that, even if it had been signed,
Lord Stonehouse’s mind had gone. I tried to draw her away. She was so frantic she would not listen. Over and over again she kept on telling me to do something. In her desperation she tried to seize the uncompleted will from Mr Cole. Only the old servant, Joseph, remained with his master, straightening the sheets, removing the signet ring, drawing the curtains round the bed with an unsteady hand, motioning another servant to do the same on the other side. Even now Lord Stonehouse seemed not to be at peace, his lower lip jutting out and his forehead creased, as if he was frowning over some piece of paper on his desk. Again, I saw none of the brutality, the deviousness, the secretiveness in that troubled face. All I saw was the burden: the chaos he had steered a course through, the arguments, the decisions, the recriminations, the time of hope when his wife had been alive and his children young, the time of despair in war and the family feud. As the curtains closed, seeming to draw him into that other world, the quarrels in this one were still going on around me. I could stand it no longer, told Anne I would wait for her outside and hurried from the room.
‘Tom!’
My father was the last person I wanted to see. I knew exactly what he would say. Like the minister, he would believe my grief was over losing my fortune, offering me some paltry consolation I did not want. I redoubled my speed, half-jumping down the next flight of stairs.
‘Tom – I must see you!’
I ran along the gallery towards the grand staircase, desperate to be out of that suffocating place. But my pace faltered when I reached Lord Stonehouse’s study. A single candle was burning on his desk. By its light a servant was preparing to hang black drapes at the window. There were shouts and curses outside from the stables.
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