"I can imagine the bargain," Twilford said, his tremendous side-whiskers bristling like the jowls of a tomcat.
"No, you can't," Whittenfield corrected him mildly. "You know what most women, and men, too, for that matter, would expect at such times. Yet that was not Sabrina's experience. She says in her journal that she wondered at first if he was one of those whose love is inverted, but it turned out otherwise. She made a bargain with this foreigner, as I say. She agreed to live in the house he had bought, to keep it for him. He did not object to her children and gave her permission to care for them as she felt best. He did not require them to serve him—"
"Well, they were what, one and three? Hardly old enough to wait upon anyone, foreigner or not," Dominick pointed out.
"There was the matter of bonds," the sixth guest said quietly.
"Precisely," Whittenfield agreed. "And this foreigner did not require that Cesily and Herbert be bonded to him, which was something of a wonder in those times. Sabrina mentions in her journal that her employer's manservant told her that he had been a bondsman, and when his master found him he refused to continue the bond."
"One of those damned humanitarian sorts." Lord Graveston sighed portentously. "The world's full of 'em."
"Doubtless an opinion shared by the children of Whitechapel," the sixth guest commented without smiling.
"Terrible state of affairs, those slums," Dominick said indignantly. "Had to drive through there once; there'd been an accident and it was the only way round. There was the most appalling stench, and the buildings looked to be held together by filth alone. The people—a complete want of conduct." Two of the other men nodded their understanding and disapproval. "One drab tried to climb into my carriage, and those who saw her make the attempt made such rude and licentious comments . . . The children were as bad as their seniors."
"This is hardly appropriate after-dinner conversation," Hamworthy opined.
"Very true," Whittenfield said smoothly. "My great-aunt's adventures with a foreigner are much more suitable." He drank down the last of his port and let the glass tip in his fingers. "Unless, of course, you're not interested in what became of her . . ."
"Oh, get on with it," Dominick said, nudging Everard with his elbow so that he would add his support.
Obediently Everard spoke up. "Yes, by all means, Charles, let's have the rest of the story."
"I still don't see how that bedeviled glass comes into it," Twilford muttered, dropping his chin forward.
"It is bedeviled, if Sabrina is to be believed," Charles said rather dreamily. "How aptly you put it, Twilford."
Lord Graveston coughed twice in an awesome way.
"Yes. Of course." Charles leaned forward in his chair and filled his glass. "I'll probably regret it in the morning, but for the present, this is precisely what's wanted." After he had settled back again and once more propped his heels on the settle, he resumed his story. "Well, as I said, Sabrina agreed to be the housekeeper to this foreigner in exchange for shelter and meals for herself and her children. She was most uneasy about the arrangement at first, because there was no saying that her benefactor might not suddenly decide to change the nature of their arrangements and make demands or her children. She was also very much aware that he could dismiss her at any time and she would be in the same sorry state that she was when he made his agreement with her. Yet she had no other choice. She could not return to England, she had no one she knew who would protect her in Antwerp, or indeed any European country and there seemed to be no other way to get money. The foreigner settled a small amount of money on her to enable her to buy cloth from the mercer so that she could dress herself and her children."
"Sounds like one of those missionary types," Twilford growled. "They're always doing that kind of thing."
"There were, naturally, certain restrictions to her duties," Whittenfield continued, "and they caused her some alarm. There were rooms of the house where she was not allowed to venture, and which were locked day and night. The foreigner often received heavily wrapped parcels from many strange lands. Gradually, Sabrina began to fear that the Count was engaged in nefarious or criminal activities. And she became convinced of it some seven months after she entered his employ. There are three entries in her journal that are at once baffling and thought-provoking. She mentions first that the Count did not often go abroad in the day. At first this disturbed her, but she saw him more than once in sunlight and noted that he did cast a shadow, and so her fear that she had fallen into the hands of a malignant spirit was lessened. Oh, you may all laugh if you choose," he said in a wounded tone. "In those times there were many with such fears. It was a superstitious age."
"And this one, of course, is not," the sixth guest said, his fine brows raising in courteous disbelief.
"Oh, those uneducated and unintelligent masses, I daresay, are still in the throes of various dreads, but for those of us who have the wit to learn, well, most of us cast off the shackles of superstition before we were out of lead strings." He took a meditative sip of his port. "Still, I suppose we can understand a little how it was that Sabrina felt the dread she did."
"Well, women, you know . . ." Hamworthy said with an indulgent smile. "Wonderful creatures, all of them, but you know what their minds are. Not one in a thousand can think, and the ones who can are always distressingly masculine. That Frenchwoman, the writer with the English name . . . Sand, isn't it? That's a case in point."
"My Great-aunt Serena was another," Whittenfield said, frowning a trifle. "Wasn't a man in the county cared to trade words with her. They respected her, of course, but you couldn't say that they liked her. Nonetheless, most of us loved her when we were children."
"Will you get back to Sabrina?" Dominick asked plaintively.
"Oh, Sabrina; yes. Told you, didn't I, that she was afraid of malign spirits? Of course. And she made up her mind that it was not the case. She thought for a while that her employer must have a mistress somewhere because of the strange hours he kept and the absolute privacy he maintained. There was always the chance that he was working for the Spanish or the French, but she found no evidence of it, and after the first few months she was looking for it. She feared that if the man was working for another government and was discovered, she would suffer as well, and after enduring so much she did not wish to expose herself to such a hazard. She came to believe that the Count was not, in fact, an agent of any of the enemies of the state. And that intrigued her even more, for there did not seem to be any reasonable explanation for his behavior, if he was not keeping a mistress or doing some other questionable thing. So she set herself the task of finding out more about her employer and his locked rooms."
"Very enterprising," Hamworthy interrupted. "Dangerous, too. I wouldn't like my housekeeper prying into my activities."
"Sabrina also had to deal with the manservant, who was as private and aloof as his master and whom she suspected of watching her. She describes him as being of middle age or a trifle older, lean, sandy-haired and blue-eyed, and yet she did not think that he was from northern Europe as such characteristics might indicate. Once she heard the manservant in conversation with the Count and she thought that they spoke in Latin, though she had not heard the language much. Their accents, if it was indeed that tongue, were strange to her, quite unlike what little scholarly intercourse she had overheard in the past, and not at all like the doggerel of the Roman Church. Yet there were a few words that made her think it was Latin, and for that reason she was more curious than ever. So she set upon a series of vigils, and after many months her patience was rewarded to a degree."
"To a degree," Lord Graveston repeated derisively. "Speak plainly for once in your life, Charles."
"Of course. I am speaking plainly. This story is not easily told, and the wine is playing great hob with my thoughts. You must make allowances for the excellence of my port, Graveston."
"I'll make allowances for anything that gets on with the tale!" was the acerbic answer.
"I'm do
ing my poor best," Whittenfield said in a slightly truculent manner. "I'm not certain you appreciate the intricacies of Sabrina's life."
"Of course I do. She was serving as housekeeper to a mighty private foreigner in Antwerp and her circumstances were badly reduced. There's nothing incomprehensible in that." Lord Graveston emptied out his pipe and gave Whittenfield a challenging glare through the tufts of his eyebrows.
"And that is not the least of it," Whittenfield insisted.
"Probably not, but you have yet to tell us that part," Dominick put in.
"Which I will do if only you will give me the chance," Whittenfield remonstrated. "Each of you, it seems, would rather discuss your own adventures. If that's your desire, so be it."
"Oh, Charles, you're being temperamental." Everard had dared to speak again, but he laughed a little so that his host would not think he had been reprimanded.
Whittenfield stared up at the ceiling in sublime abstraction, his eyes faintly glazed. "You know, when I first read her journal, I thought that Sabrina was indulging in fancy, but I have read a few things since then that lead me to believe she was telling the wholly accurate truth about her experiences. That disturbs me, you know. It means that a great many things I used to regard as nonsense may not be, after all."
"What are you talking about, Charles?" Dominick demanded. He had selected another cigar and paused to light it.
"You haven't read the journal, have you?" He did not bother to look at his cousin. "Naturally not. But I have, several times now, and it is a most—unnerving document."
"So you persist in telling us," Hamworthy sighed. "Yet you have not particularly justified your claim."
"How little faith you have, Peter," Whittenfield said with an assumption of piety. "If you would bear with me, you will find out why I have said what I have about Sabrina and that glass. I wasn't the one who brought the subject up; I have merely offered to enlighten you." He drank again, licking away the crescent it left on his upper lip.
"Then be kind enough to tell us the rest," said the sixth guest.
With this clear invitation before him, Whittenfield hesitated. "I don't know what yon will make of it. I haven't sorted it out myself yet, not since I realized she was telling the truth." He smiled uncertainly. "Well, I'll leave it up to you. That's probably best." He took another nervous sip of wine. "She—that is, Sabrina, of course—she continued to watch the Count. She was up many nights, so that it was all she could do to work the next day. During that time she took great care to do her work well. And she made herself as useful as possible to the manservant so that she might stay in his good graces. In her journal she related that he never behaved in any but the most polite way, and yet she felt the same sort of awe for the servant that she did for the master. And she feared to face him directly, except when absolutely necessary. When she had been the Count's housekeeper for a few months, she had enough coins laid aside to enable her to purchase a crucifix—she had sold her old one the year before—and she mentions that the Count commented on it when he saw it, saying that it was merely gold plate. She indignantly reminded him that it was the best she could afford, and that the gold was not important, the faith it represented was. The Count acknowledged her correction, and nothing more was said. Then, two weeks after that, he presented her with a second crucifix of the finest gold, finished in the Florentine style. It was in the family for some time, I recall. Aunt Serena said that her grandmother used to wear it. That was a great surprise to Sabrina, and she promptly took it off to a Roman priest, for all she did not trust him, and asked him to bless the treasure, just in case. He did as she asked, after he had satisfied himself that though Sabrina was one of the English heathen, yet she knew enough of religion to warrant his granting her request."
"And did her Count vanish in a puff of smoke next morning?" Dominick ventured sarcastically.
"No. He was unperturbed as ever. From what Sabrina says, he was a man of the utmost urbanity and self-possession. She never heard him raise his voice, never saw any evidence that he abused his manservant, never found any indication of moral excesses. I've been trying for years to puzzle out what she meant by moral excesses. Still, whatever they were he didn't do them. Finally one night, while she was keeping her vigil on the stair below one of the locked doors, being fatigued by her housekeeper's tasks during the day and having spent the better part of most nights watching, she fell asleep, in this case quite literally. She tumbled down the stairs, and in her journal she states that although she does not remember doing so, she must have cried out, for she does recall a door opening and light falling on her from one of the locked rooms."
"Was she much hurt?" Everard asked. "I fell down the stairs once, and ended up with torn ligaments in my shoulder where I'd tried to catch myself. Doctor said I was fortunate not to have broken my skull, but he is forever saying such things."
Whittenfield's brow puckered in annoyance. "She was much bruised and she had broken her arm—luckily the right one, for she was left-handed."
"Ah," Twilford said sagely. "That accounts for it."
"The left-handedness?" Whittenfield asked, momentarily diverted. "It may be. There are some odd gifts that the left-handed are supposed to have. Come to think of it, Serena was left-handed. There might be something to it."
The sixth guest smiled wryly. "And the ambidextrous?"
"I don't approve of that," Lord Graveston announced. "Isn't natural."
"You don't think so?" the sixth guest asked, but neither expected nor got an answer from the crusty old peer.
"Back to Sabrina," Dominick ordered.
"Yes, back to Sabrina," Whittenfield said, draining his glass again. "Remarkable woman that she was. Where was I?"
"She had fallen down the stairs and broken her arm," one of the guests prompted.
"Oh, yes. And her employer came out of the locked room. Yes. She swooned when she fell, or shortly after, and her next memory was of being carried, though where and by whom she could not tell, for her pain was too intense to allow her much opportunity for thought. She contented herself with closing her eyes and waiting for the worst of her feeling to pass."
"Only thing she could do, probably," Everard said grimly.
"It would seem so. This employer of hers took her into one of the rooms that had been locked, and when she came to her senses she was on a splendid couch in a small and elegant room. You may imagine her amazement at this, for until that time she had thought that the house, being in one of the poorest parts of the city, had no such finery in it. Yet there were fine paintings on the walls, and the furniture was luxuriously upholstered. And this was a time when such luxury was fairly rare, even among the wealthy. This Count was obviously a much more impressive figure than Sabrina had supposed."
"Or perhaps he was a rich tradesman, amusing himself with a pose, and that would explain the remote house and the lack of company," Dominick said cynically.
"I thought that myself, at one time," Whittenfield confessed. "I was sure that she had been hoodwinked by one of the best. But I made a few inquiries and learned that whoever this Count was, he was most certainly genuine nobility."
"How curious," the sixth guest said.
"And it became more curious still," Whittenfield went on, unaware of the sardonic note in the other man's voice. "The Count dosed her with syrup of poppies and then set her arm. She describes the whole event as unreal, and writes that she felt she was floating in a huge, warm bath though she could feel the bones grate together. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but could not bring her thoughts to bear on any of them. Then she once again fainted, and when she woke she was in her own chamber, her arm was expertly splinted and bound with tape, and her head felt as if it were filled with enormous pillows."
"And her employer? What of him?" Twilford inquired, caught up now in spite of himself.
"He visited her the next day, very solicitous of her and anxious to do what he could to speed her recovery." Whittenfield paused for a reaction, and go
t one from Everard.
"Well, she was his housekeeper. She was of no use to him if she could not work."
"He never told her that," Whittenfield said, gratified that one of his guests had said what he had wanted to hear. "She made note of it in her journal. Finally, after ten days she got up sufficient courage to say something to the Count, and he reassured her at once that he would prefer she recover completely before returning to her duties. There is an entry then that hints at a more intimate exchange, but the phrases are so vague that it is impossible to tell for sure. Mind, that wasn't a mealy-mouthed age like this one. If something had passed between them, there would be no reason for her to hide behind metaphors, unless she feared the reproach of her husband later, which I doubt. When at last Sir James was released from gaol, he hired on as a mercenary soldier and went east into the pay of the Hapsburgs and nothing is known of his fate. On the other hand, at the end of her three years with her Count, Sabrina came back to England and set herself up in fairly good style. She never remarried but apparently had one or two lovers. Her journal is fairly explicit about them. One was named Richard and had something to do with Norfolk. The other was Henry and was some sort of relative of the Howards. She is very careful not to be too direct about their identities except in how they had to do with her. Doubtless Sir James would have gnashed his teeth to know that his wife ended up doing well for herself. Or he might have liked to live off her money."
"But surely your great-aunt did not become wealthy through the good offices of this Count, did she?" Twilford asked, eyeing his host askance.
"Probably a bequest. Those Continentals are always settling great amounts of money on their faithful servants. I read of a case not long ago where a butler in France got more than the children—" Lord Graveston stopped in the middle of his words and stared hard at the sixth guest. "No offense intended."
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