SH06_War

by Edward Cline

  Alice Tallmadge was inconsolable for several days after receiving Roger’s first letter in mid-November. She had since received a series of letters from her husband, expressing his hope to be able to see her again the next fall. “She is both. Well, at least he was not court-martialed.”

  “It was foolish of him that day, siding with you against that Customsman! He should have known it would be reported!”

  Hugh shrugged. “Perhaps he did know. But it was important to him to take that action. A right thing for him to do.” He smiled, for the first time this evening. “How is Miss Dilch?” he asked.

  “She is fine. After reading about that Wheatley woman’s visit here, she has written a pound of poetry. One verse was even published in the Evening Standard, two months ago. James may try to find a publisher for her work.” After another long silence, Reverdy asked, “Have you seen your uncle?”

  “No.”

  After a moment, Reverdy braved, “I have, Hugh.”

  Hugh turned in surprise to face her. “Why? Did he send for you?”

  “No. I called on him, at Windridge Court, some weeks ago, shortly after I returned from Bath, after I got your letter there. I called on him when I knew he was not entertaining others.”

  “But, why?”

  “To see if some reconciliation between you and him was possible.”

  Hugh shook his head. “It is not possible.”

  “He agreed,” sighed Reverdy. “I abandoned that purpose early on. But our conversation was otherwise cordial. He asked many questions about you, and us, and Virginia.”

  “My uncle’s curiosity has been proven many times a lair for the unsuspecting, Reverdy. Beware of his hospitality.” Hugh paused. “You should not have volunteered any intelligence about us or Virginia. Under the present circumstances, he is an enemy — ours, and the colonies’.”

  “You are being unfair to him, I think,” ventured Reverdy in protest. “I could see plainly that he was miserable. He has not seen his brother your father and his family in years. He has communicated by messenger only with your father for so long. For company, he is surrounded by fearful servants and conniving politicians and peers. His very words to me.”

  Hugh scoffed in dismissal. “His preferred company for as long as I have known him.”

  Reverdy ventured, “I think that if you made a gesture of conciliation to him, sunlight and peace would enter into all our lives, and all would be well…and we could be happy again.”

  “Reverdy!” exclaimed Hugh with angry sharpness. “That is a contemptible idea!”

  Reverdy seemed to cower in fear away from him to the corner of the compartment. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her in that manner. She was shocked.

  Hugh continued. “Have you forgotten all the misery he has caused me, and caused the family? Have you forgotten that he was probably responsible for Sir Dogmael’s murder? Have you forgotten that he would prefer me to be a toady, instead of the man you love? Or dead?”

  Reverdy could not reply to this scolding outburst. She sat stunned. Inside her fur muffler, her hands clenched each other anxiously. She was afraid.

  Hugh said, “You should not be taken in by his misery. There are two kinds of that condition, Reverdy: The one caused by injustice and endured by innocents, and the other is the natural companion of an evil person. Of course, my uncle is miserable! He is plagued by his own malignancy!”

  Reverdy said nothing, but looked out the glass into the passing darkness. It seemed safer to watch nothing than the severe reproach on her husband’s face, which made her feel like a criminal.

  They did not speak again until the hackney arrived at the steps of James Brune’s residence on Berkeley Square. Hugh handed her out of the vehicle, told the driver to wait, and walked his wife to the door.

  On the steps, Reverdy asked suddenly, “Are you still determined to speak in the Commons?”

  “Yes.” They had discussed the subject during their last meeting. She did not approve of the idea. She thought he would merely make more enemies.

  “When will you return…to Virginia?”

  “In early spring. Perhaps sooner, if circumstances permit.”

  “What circumstances, Hugh?” asked Reverdy.

  “Whether or not you wish to return with me. And whether or not I see anything to be gained by staying here to audit Parliament.”

  Reverdy braved a bold look into his face. “You would not stay here for me?”

  Hugh shook his head. “If there is nothing to be gained by it, no.”

  “Not even for the…politics?”

  “If I conclude that Parliament is deaf to reason, no.”

  Reverdy turned to face the ornate door, reached up, and yanked the bell-pull. She said, not turning to face him, “It seems that you are married more to ‘Lady Liberty’ than to me, Hugh.”

  “You must own that she has been more a mistress to me than you have been of late, my dear.”

  She was surprised, not by his words, but by the tenderness and regret in them. Any other man, she knew, would have uttered them with a growling, cutting bitterness meant to hurt. She resented his not having said it that way, for it left her no excuse to reply in kind. She fought the knowledge, and replied, “You asked me not to demand that you choose between us. I won’t. You have made that choice, Hugh. I cannot tolerate this rivalry. I have tried to, all these years…you know that…but never could.”

  They heard a bolt being moved then, and the door opened. A servant greeted her. Without looking back at Hugh, Reverdy hurried in. The servant, who knew him, raised his brow in silent question, waiting for Hugh. Hugh shook his head once. The servant nodded in answer, and closed the door. Hugh heard the bolt slide home.

  Upon hearing that sound, he thought: That is the end of it.

  Since seeing her again after she returned from Bath, he had observed, at first with alarm, then with an imposed dispassion, a kind of mathematics at work in their relationship. Numbers represented facts, and all those facts represented an unalterable sum. That sum was reached tonight. She had been seduced by the city, by all it had to offer. All the things that concerned her, from its politics to its society, the city’s countless, incidental distractions, were facts that now outweighed any value she might have seen in him. In consuming them, they had consumed her soul. She saw the unalterable in him, and did not want it.

  It was she who had made a choice, he thought. She was not what he had always thought she was, or could be. The thing that he saw in her, he asked himself: Could he blame his imagination? Or a desperation to see it? Perhaps both. Perhaps once it had lived, but it had since died. For the first time since he had known her, he acknowledged a chasm that could never be bridged. He knew that he must accept that fact, as well, in time.

  Hugh heard someone inquire, “Sir?” He turned to look up, and saw the hackney driver scowling down at him from his perch. Hugh nodded once to the man, strode back down the steps into the drizzle to the vehicle, and said, “To Chelsea.”

  During the ride back up the Thames, he sat watching the darkness pass by through the glass, feeling desolate, filled by an emptiness that was at the same time a great weight of grief.

  * * *

  It was late when he arrived at Cricklegate. Everyone had retired: his parents, Alice, and even the servants. He let himself in with his own key. When he reached his room, he found a letter sitting in a salver on his desk. It was from John Proudlocks, written in late October. He lit a lamp, opened the letter, and read it.

  Proudlocks dwelt on news of their friends and of the troubles in Virginia and in the colonies, and then brought up another subject. “His name is Jared Hunt. I saw him near Caxton, on the road to Williamsburg. He was leaving the vicinity of Meum Hall, after having enquired about your whereabouts of some of your laborers. He is the same man that your father says is your uncle’s secretary. We saw him twice in the Turk’s Head tavern there in London. He is the man who attempted to rummage Mr. Frake’s house. Mr. Frake and I ar
e curious about his presence here. We are certain that he is here at the behest of your uncle, Lord Danvers. To what purpose, we can only guess.”

  Hugh put the letter aside. He would ask his father about it tomorrow. He could not now devote any time or energy to wondering about his uncle’s machinations or this Mr. Hunt.

  Chapter 15: The Epiphany

  Rupert Beecroft, the business agent at Meum Hall, forwarded Roger Tallmadge’s letter to Hugh, penned in Boston. It reached London in late November.

  After describing his circumstances and Lieutenant Manners’s betrayal, the captain wrote, “Boston is a pretty town, but now it bristles with hostility instead of bustling with commerce, and looks emaciated for the closing of the port. I interviewed with General or Governor Gage in Salem, but shortly thereafter he moved the government back to Boston, as well as his headquarters, for the smaller town proved untenable. Only the most essential elements of his government had been moved there by the time Lieutenant Manners and I were directed to it, so the General’s affairs were not much affected by the move back. Salem was also taken over by a provincial ‘congress,’ instigated by Mr. Samuel Adams, and a leading merchant here, Mr. John Hancock, and a Dr. Joseph Warren, all of them very fiery fellows among a host of them, and very much the objects of General Gage’s attention. This new ‘congress’ asserts that it, and not General Gage’s, is the true government.

  “I am assigned a billet in Boston, in the house of a Mrs. Brophy, a sea captain’s widow, with two other officers, both senior to me, much against the will and means of the lady, for the new act gives her no choice in the matter. She receives pittance in compensation, if any at all, from the army and the other officers. I have tried to help her out with whatever coin I can spare. I believe she is appreciative of the gesture, and I would do more, but a gesture is all my purse can afford as penance for the imposition.

  “The army here is quite useless and impotent, unable to move at will without risking a violent encounter with the rebels, which the General wishes to avert. However, he has ordered discreet forays into the surrounding countryside and hamlets to seize or destroy arms and powder cached there. But these expeditions seem futile, for your friends the rebels seem to have an infinite supply of these provisions. There have been no clashes yet between them and our troops, but backs are up on both sides and tempers grow short, and I fear that some violence is inevitable.

  “I have been put in charge of training some regulars from broken regiments and companies reduced by sickness and desertion, and have persuaded the General to pay them from his own budget. They are a good company, although the worst recruits in it are the American loyalists, whose ardor to smote the rebels greatly surpasses their capacity for discipline, and they give me the most trouble.

  “I do hope that nothing happens while I am here. I am of two minds in my predicament: I would hesitate to fire on the people here, for their grievances are in the main legitimate. But I am also reluctant to tolerate abuse by them of my fellow Britons who wear the King’s scarlet, for our rank and file are mostly ignorant of the causes of the troubles. Even many of the officers, who boast some education, are confounded by the heat of defiance exhibited by their cousinal countrymen, but like me, determined to do their duty. Other officers are contemptuous of the rebel militia companies here, and are spoiling for a fight, hoping for a chance to bloody a few heads. Most of my fellow officers have no field experience to credit them, and I have cautioned them on the horrors of war, and also that if we come to blows with the inhabitants, very likely the Americans will not oblige us with a purely European mode of fighting it, as I noted in my report to Lord Barrington.

  “I am fortunate that General Gage attaches much importance to my report, and to my career, as well, so that I am not sitting in arrest awaiting the judgment of a court martial. One of his staff suggested to me, in an inebriate and indiscreet moment in a tavern, that Manners was despatched to Montreal to avoid the chance of a duel between he and me. There was not much chance for that, for dueling seems to me a vain and wasteful way to recoup one’s honor. In any encounter with him, I would have merely shown my back and opened a window to express my contempt…. ”

  The morning after his last evening with Reverdy, before joining his family downstairs in the breakfast room, Hugh reread Roger’s letter and others from Jack Frake and John Proudlocks, to divert his mind from the loss of Reverdy. He took the time to draft replies to all of them.

  Over breakfast, he did not discuss her, but showed his parents Proudlocks’s letter. Garnet Kenrick’s face grew red in anger. “He has sent this man to harm you!” exclaimed the Baron. “And found him a place in the Customs in your parts to disguise his purpose! I shall speak to the Earl about it — after I have made some inquiries.”

  “Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?” asked Hugh. “I should like to see his face when he learns that he has been found out.”

  “No. I do not wish him to set eyes on you ever again.”

  Effney Kenrick studied her son over the breakfast table. “How is Reverdy, Hugh?” she asked with guarded gentleness.

  Hugh replied with some uncharacteristic woodenness, “It is finished, madam. We were married in Virginia, and if there is a court open there when I return, I shall seek an annulment.”

  “I’m sorry, Hugh. For the both of you.”

  Hugh merely nodded in acknowledgement, then abruptly changed the subject. “I bought Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son on Duck Lane yesterday. Quite an interesting self-portrait of the man. It is unfortunate that he died last year. He could have perhaps seconded Lords Chatham and Richmond in Lords on the American business. I believe Mr. Jones consulted him on some matters years ago. Much of his advice to his son, however, is arguably vacuous or too precious for words. Still, I hope to finish the book during the cessation of hostilities at Westminster.” He would be idle until Parliament met again after the Christmas recess.

  From that moment on, Hugh sought neither advice nor consolation from his parents about Reverdy, and his parents thought it wiser not to offer any.

  On the morning before Christmas, while snow fell, Garnet Kenrick journeyed alone by hackney to Windridge Court, his first visit there in years. Alden Curle answered the door, and for a moment was too astounded to do anything but gape stupidly at the Baron.

  “I am here to see the Earl,” said the Baron sternly.

  Curle stammered, “He…he is…indisposed at the moment, milord.”

  “I saw him just now in his bedroom window, Mr. Curle. If you do not admit me, I shall admit myself.”

  Still stunned by the visitor’s presence, Curle merely blinked and remained immobile. The Baron sighed impatiently and brushed past the major domo.

  He climbed the wide stairs and strode directly down the passageway to his brother’s room, unbuttoning his great coat as he went. He opened the door to the chamber without knocking.

  His brother was still in his nightgown and nightcap, standing by the fireplace, a cup and saucer in his hands. Claybourne, his valet, was laying out the Earl’s garments on the spacious bed. Both men looked up in shock at the intruder. The Baron noted that his brother had not aged gracefully. He thought it could be said that his brother had decayed. There was a noticeable curve in his back, and a pronounced stoop to his shoulders that had not been there the last time the Baron had seen him. His long, fox-like face had, it seemed, grown narrower and paler, the eyes recessed behind a confused map of lines and creases.

  “Brother!” exclaimed Basil Kenrick with disbelief. “What…?”

  “I will be brief, Basil,” said Garnet Kenrick without preamble. “Your secretary, Mr. Jared Hunt, is in Virginia. Is this not true?”

  “I…what are you talking about?”

  “What is his purpose there?”

  “How…?…. I don’t know what you are…”

  Garnet Kenrick spoke before his brother could complete his protest. “I enquired at the offices of the Commissioner of the Revenue and Customs Board
, Basil, and learned that you secured Mr. Hunt a place in Virginia, one giving him some special authority there. I am certain that such an appointment came at a price. I learned further that Sir Henoch Pannell interceded on your behalf in those offices to secure the appointment. To what purpose, Basil?”

  Basil Kenrick stood still, and said nothing. His eyes narrowed in petulant defiance.

  Garnet Kenrick, taking a step forward, raised a hand and emphasized his words with a stabbing finger. “Hear me well, Basil: Should anything happen to my son that reveals your hand, either here or in Virginia, I shall hold you responsible, and call you out to pistols, swords or bare knuckles. It will not matter to me, which. And when I have finished with you, I shall seek out Mr. Hunt, wherever he may be found, to the same end. Am I clear?”

  The Earl glowered at his brother. He remembered the cup and saucer in his hands, then flung them aside at the fireplace, where they crashed into the firedog with a tinkle of shattered porcelain. The flames and the hot iron fizzled angrily from the spilt tea. Claybourne, witnessing this confrontation, cringed and took a step backward.

  The Earl’s hands opened and closed in trembling fists. He, too, took a step closer, his head lowered as though he meant to pounce. He demanded in a taunting growl, “Are you threatening me, Garnet?”

  Garnet Kenrick shook his head once. “No, I am warning you. It is my son you threaten. Good day.” He squared his shoulders, spun around, and walked out.

  * * *

  The Christmas holiday season in the Kenrick residence was subdued, almost dour. In the midst of her preparations for it, Effney Kenrick toyed with the idea of inviting James Brune, his wife, and Reverdy to Cricklegate for at least one day to share roast goose and plum pudding. She asked Hugh what he thought of the idea.