by Karleen Koen
She had fed them well. She was managing to live very nicely on her mother's allowance, supplemented by Montagu, and now the three of them drank brandy and discussed politics. Or rather the men discussed politics and Diana listened, waiting for the right spot in which to insert fresh pleas for her divorce petition. All the news was centered on the fizzling invasion in Scotland, of the Pretender's flight, his leaving his loyal Scot nobles to face the English and Hanoverian troops. Diana yawned behind her hand; Kit had been in Scotland, but luckily for her, he was gone with the Pretender. There was talk that he was in Paris. Good. Let Roger deal with him. To her, Kit was as good as dead. He had taken her too close to the edge, and now she felt nothing for him. except the need to be divorced from him and completely on her own. Walpole said Roger was reported to be buying half of France for Devane House and the other half for Barbara.
Clemmie scuttled into the room and handed Diana a note. She rose and walked closer to the candelabra to read it. Walpole and Montagu paused to watch her walk, and it was a sight worth stopping for. But they were unprepared for her shrill cry. She sank to the floor and suddenly the room was in chaos, as both men ran to her and Clemmie screeched. Walpole reached her first and carried her back to the settee. Montagu rubbed her hands, while Clemmie held a burning feather under her nose. She began to revive, her eyelids fluttering, her face white under its rouge. Walpole poured some brandy down her throat, and she sputtered and her eyes flew open and she coughed and cursed Walpole between each cough.
"That is more like it!" said Walpole. "You frightened us—" He broke off because Diana put her hands to her mouth and began to cry, heedless of her makeup or of how she looked. The sight was enough to make Clemmie's almost toothless mouth fall open.
Montagu picked up the crumpled note. "It is her children," he said to Walpole. "They are dead…the smallpox. My God!"
Clemmie began to wail again; Walpole patted Diana's hand, but Diana was oblivious to him. She was crying and rocking back and forth and her rouge was streaking her cheeks, and she did not seem to care.
That, and the smallpox, were more than Montagu could bear. He kissed her hand.
"My dear, I feel it is better if you are alone in this time of travail. I offer my sympathies. Indeed I do. I will call tomorrow or the next day to see how you are getting along." He was halfway out the door, finding his hat and cane and cloak by himself. "My sympathies—"
"Coward! Bloody coward!" Diana screamed, her face ugly, her throat muscles bulging. "Be sure and wash your hands afterward—the note might carry the pox—a pox on you, you half–man! They are dead! Dead!" Montagu scuttled out the door. Diana in a rage was impossible. Diana in a rage and crying was more than he could bear.
Diana pulled at Clemmie, and Clemmie sat down like a large lump on the settee, and the two women put their arms around each other and wept. Walpole lit his pipe and smoked, watching them. After a while, Diana made an attempt to wipe her face. She spat at him, "Why have you not left? Are you not afraid of the smallpox? Of grief? Or do you think I am going to forget myself and allow you in my bed!"
He did not answer.
"Leave me!" she cried. "I want to be alone. I have lost my children, and I never thought to, and now they are dead, and I want to go to Tamworth to see them buried, and it may already be too late!"
"There will be smallpox in Tamworth—" he began.
"I do not care! They are dead! Do you not see? I never thought they would die before I did! Go away!"
She buried her face in Clemmie's ampleness and sobbed. Clemmie sobbed with her. Walpole sat silently, waiting. Finally, the sobs lessened again. Clemmie sighed and blew her nose on her apron. Diana looked at Walpole, her face ravaged, a travesty of its normal beauty. Wearily, she said, "You are persistent. I give you that. Clemmie, fetch another brandy bottle. I am going to get drunk, and you, sir, may join me. I am going to get so drunk I will not be able to remember what a bad mother I have been. So drunk that it will take me days to recover. So drunk I will not remember how I feel at this moment."
Clemmie poured the three of them large glasses of brandy. Diana drained hers in a single gesture and held out her glass for more.
"I have a daughter," said Walpole, when they were both on their fourth glass. "A lovely girl, your Barbara's age, who is ill. The doctors try every cure, hurting her more with each one, and nothing makes her well. In my heart, I believe she is dying, and I pray to God that her suffering will be brief, but He does not seem inclined to hear my prayers." He spoke reflectively, sadly.
"I never cared," said Diana, slowly, choosing her words carefully now that the brandy was numbing her tongue. "I never visited them or thought about them. They were just there, like the sun and trees. Each time Kit bedded me, I had another. When he gambled, and there was no money, I cursed them, but my mother raised them. I cursed them and wished them dead so I would not have to worry about their marriages and settlements and allowances. And now they are dead. And it hurts. Robert, it hurts me so much that I almost wish I were dead myself. Do you believe in God, Robert? Is He punishing me for my sins? There are so many of them. And I have enjoyed them all."
They shook their heads over her sins and drank more. The fire sputtered, but Clemmie was too intent on cuddling her brandy glass to add fresh coal. The candles began to gutter as time passed, and they drank steadily. Diana, almost as drunk now as she had wished, shivered. She looked at Walpole, who had matched her glass for glass and then some.
"I have a most terrible urge," she told him. "I want to go upstairs and make love like a dog in heat. Am I mad, Robert? I am no prude, but I shock myself."
"They say it is a common reaction to death. A need to celebrate life in the midst of death."
"You speak beautifully. No wonder you hold the Commons in the palm of your hand. God, I feel so sad. I want to wallow like a dog. I want to know I am alive, and not dead like my children. Am I bad, Robert?"
He nodded his head, and she burst out laughing. She stood up and put down her glass, taking some time to put it down correctly. It kept wanting to fall over. She ran her hands over her body, cupping her breasts deliberately.
"I am going upstairs," she told him.
"Diana, this is not going to be the way you think. Are you prepared for that?"
She laughed at him. "No man is a match for me."
"I am, but I think you are too drunk to appreciate me. But you will, I guarantee that."
She walked toward the door, undulating her hips, glancing over her shoulder, her seductiveness spoiled only by her hiccup. "Now is your chance, Robert. Now or never."
Walpole set down his glass and followed her.
Clemmie sat in the shadows, nursing her brandy. "We are bad," she said aloud. "Lord have mercy on us."
* * *
Like three black crows, the Duchess and Annie and Cousin Henley sat in the winter parlor, their black shawls over their black gowns. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness, thought the Duchess. My grandchildren are in the darkness. I am alone.
The thought pierced her through and through, like cold in her bones on a winter morning. She had no one left to care for, save Henley, who would only grow more dried and bitter and pinched with the years, now that she, too, had lost her charges….The life of an impoverished female relative…servitude in a house that was not yours, among relatives who took you for granted…she would assure Henley of her place at Tamworth, assure her that her service to the children had been seen, for the woman had put away her bitterness at the first sign of sickness and nursed them all unceasingly. What did Henley feel, sitting now with her tearstained, swollen face? She had thrown herself on the caskets at the funeral. Had she truly loved the children, of whom she so often complained? Who ever knew what was in the heart and mind of another? Suffer the little children to come unto me, Vicar Latchrod had read in his quavering, reedy voice, for such is the kingdom of God. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with His
arms, and carry them into His bosom. Smallpox. Lord, have mercy upon us.
Tom had been first, complaining of vague aches and pains so that she had not sent him back to school. And then the baby, whose fever rose so high that he went into convulsions, and she and Annie and Henley took turns bathing that small, thrashing body with cooling fever water. And with their tears. There were no spots on the baby, no telltale rash. He was dead after two nights of fever and convulsions. They could not weep enough tears to save him. They did not yet know.
But on Tom's body had come that fatal red rash. And then she felt terror, cold tendrils curling themselves around her heart to squeeze it. Smallpox was merciless. There was no warning. No rhyme or reason as to whom it would strike, or how hard. Those who survived might have no scars or only a few or become blind or so pockmarked they forever wore a mask to hide the ravages. It had come to her house before. (Visions of Dicken. And his child. The rash swelling into raised pimples that became blisters of yellow pus. Swelling father and child into monsters of themselves. "I am on fire," Dicken had cried. Over and over. She and Annie and all their fever waters, their ague drops, their cordials and spirits of wine, had been unable to save them. Richard's face as they buried his firstborn and grandchild...No more, she had thought, staring at that face. Saying at last what she had always known. His sons were his main spring. He himself would not survive their deaths. Not like her, who would survive anything…even Giles. Her dear son Giles. An epidemic at Cambridge. They sent his body home. She made Perryman pry open the coffin. There would be no burying of him without a last look. The smell as the lid began to lift. Perryman dragging her away. The smallpox had turned Giles to black bile.)
So the smallpox had taken two of her sons from her, and now it appeared again, its death's head leering at her in the night as she tried to pray for strength and understanding. The end came swiftly for the little girls, who died soon after the first rash appeared. Their urine was bloody, and she had known at seeing it that there was no saving them. Smallpox was inside them. Tom and Kit fought valiantly, as brave in their fight for their lives as their grandfather, God bless him, had been on the battlefield. The pustules raised their skin until they screamed with it. Their skin sloughed off in large pieces.
The agony—theirs, hers. The agony of watching someone you love suffer so. The odor in the sickroom so strong that everyone wore rags soaked in camphor around their faces to endure it.
Barbara's trunk of presents arriving. She held toys before fever–bright eyes, and the children smiled and whispered their sister's name. Be better, she urged them, croaking past tears swollen, knotlike in her throat. Be better…sweet Lord Jesus, how would she ever have the strength to write Barbara? Little Anne, sitting up in bed; at the last, calling "Bab! Bab!" over and over. Kit, his face disfigured, ravaged with running sores and lost pieces of flesh, each breath a struggle as the smallpox attacked his insides, holding fast to a leaden soldier his sister had sent. Dying with it in his hand. The Duchess shivered even though the fires burned brightly, trembled with age and grief….Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man child conceived…Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it….Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it. Darkness. And the shadow of death. Smallpox….
Dulcinea leapt from her lap, sulking because she had been locked away. It was bad fortune for cats to be around funerals, but Dulcinea did not believe such things and took it personally. Dulcinea was pregnant, and pregnancy made her impatient with human fancies. She began to groom herself in the middle of the floor, for all to see, but then lifted her head suddenly, and the Duchess looked up to see a woman swathed in black veiling push aside one of the curtains that served for doors. Dulcinea hissed. Diana, thought the Duchess blankly. Surely that could not be Diana under all those veils. And then Diana was sweeping across the room, her black cloak half on and half off, and throwing herself on the Duchess, who almost fell out of her chair in surprise. Diana was weeping in her arms. Now why, thought the Duchess. Cousin Henley stood up, her face expressing outrage. And now another person, Tony, her grandson, was coming into the room. He leaned past Diana and kissed the Duchess on both cheeks.
"Came at once," he said. "Soon as I heard. I am so sorry, Grandmama." He pressed her hand, and the Duchess felt tears starting. Tony. Tony had come to her.
"My children, my children," wailed Diana.
Everyone stared at her, as she threw back her veils dramatically and exposed a face swollen with tears. It was that sight more than anything that bereft the Duchess of speech. Diana crying. Diana feeling. It was beyond belief.
"I came as soon as I received your letter," Diana said, wiping her tears with a black handkerchief. "I cannot believe it has happened. Truly I cannot. I have cried the whole journey. Ask Tony."
Everyone in the room looked at Tony. He nodded his head, smiling at his grandmother shyly, and reached down and took her hand in his. The Duchess found that she liked the way his big hand felt on hers. Warm, comforting. From Tony, of all people. She stared up at him gratefully.
"Grandmama looks tired," he said.
"She is tired," said Annie, frowning at Diana. Annie and Cousin Henley were both rigid with disapproval. The Duchess was surprised their glances had not slain Diana on the spot.
"When are the children to be buried?" asked Diana.
"They were buried a day ago, Lady Diana," said Annie, a look of grim satisfaction on her face. "You know what smallpox is like. It could not wait."
"You buried them without my being here?" Diana looked at her mother. Her voice was even more low and throbbing than usual. "How could you?"
"And how would we know you were going to grace us with your presence?" snapped Annie, bristling.
"We had no idea you would come here," intervened the Duchess. She was too weary for quarreling. And she found that Diana's entrance had taken her breath away. Diana burst into fresh tears.
The Duchess stared at her, nonplussed. This new crying, caring Diana was more than she could cope with. She felt as if she were caught in the web of a nightmare, or a bad comedy. Nothing seemed real.
"Harlot!" cried Cousin Henley in quivering tones, her nose red with emotion. She stalked up to the weeping Diana. "Whore of Babylon! How dare you show your face here!"
To everyone's amazement, she slapped Diana across the face.
Diana slapped Henley back. Now all was true pandemonium, as Henley fell sobbing to the floor and Diana cursed her like a stableboy, and Annie screamed for everyone to be quiet. The Duchess thought she would faint. She knew she should rise and deal with it, as she had always done, but she did not have it in her. She was too tired, too old.
"Aunt Diana, leave the room. Annie, take Cousin Henley away. Put her to bed. She is distraught. Grandmama, come with me. I am taking you to your chamber."
Everyone stared at Tony. He is speaking in complete sentences, thought the Duchess. I did not know he could. He swept her up as if she were nothing. Annie led a sobbing Henley away. Diana picked up her cloak and glared, but there was no one left to glare at. The Duchess was being carried like a queen from the room. She lay in Tony's arms like a frail child, thinking, Tony…Tony. There is nothing of William in him but his height and fairness. Tony.
He put her down on her bed and covered her with a blanket and brought her a glass of wine. He had not even taken off his cloak. He sat down on the edge of her bed, and she was glad, because the room seemed too dark and empty. She was so glad her heart almost felt joyous. The Lord moved in mysterious ways. He had sent her Tony. Tears started behind her eyes. She was so old and weak. She spoke gruffly to cover her weakness.
"Your mother was angry at your coming, was she not? Do not lie, boy. I can read your face. It was a dangerous thing for you to do. There is still smallpox in the village, and you are his heir." She nodded toward Richard's picture over the fireplace. Tony looked at it too. Richard stared at them, handsome, proud
, eternally young.
"Why did you come, Tony?"
"Bab," he said.
She did not understand. Dulcinea leapt upon the bed and went at once to Tony, purring around him until he stroked her head. She mewed her approval to the Duchess and settled herself in his lap, purring so loudly that it was difficult to talk over her. Dulcinea never did such things. She disapproved of all strangers.
"Bab talked of you," Tony said, not meeting her eyes. "At Saylor House. Of you and…the others. Loves you all so much. Knew when Mother got your letter that you would need me. Here I am. For Bab's sake. She loves you, Grandmama. As I do," he added softly.