Reckless Angel

by Jane Feather

  “I am learning, madam.”

  Much later that afternoon, Henrietta awoke in the darkened bedchamber, aware first that she was starving and then that one side of her face was twice its usual size. Memory rushed back and she forgot her ills immediately. They had won, and without a lengthy and expensive legal battle. She was free, once and for all, from her father’s long-armed malevolence. But where was everyone? Had they forgotten all about her? Such neglect seemed unjust after the part she had played in the morning’s drama. She sat up gingerly. Her face throbbed, but she felt perfectly strong.

  The sound of voices reached Henrietta from the parlor—cheerful voices and the clink of knife on pewter. As she came down the stairs, the rich aromas of Dorcas’s cooking filled the narrow hall, wafting from both kitchen and parlor, and her mouth watered. She pushed open the parlor door and stood in her nightgown in the doorway, taking in the scene around the table where sat Daniel, all three Osberts, and Master Filbert. They were all flushed with good food, wine, fire-warmth, and good company.

  “I see my father did not join you for dinner,” she said. “And I take it mighty ill in you, Daniel, that ye’d not wake me.”

  Daniel pushed back his chair and came toward her. “Now, do not be vexed, Harry,” he said, laughing at her cross expression. “We have saved your dinner, but thought you’d enjoy it more when you’d had your sleep.” He caught her chin, holding it as he studied her blackening eye. “Does it pain you?”

  She shrugged. “Some, but not as much as my belly, which is cleaving to my backbone.”

  “Come and sit down. There are grilled pigeons and a hash of rabbit and lamb. Which d’ye care for first?” He drew her to the table, and she found it impossible to maintain her aggrieved pout under this determined refusal to acknowledge either the pout or the reasons for it. The Osberts were all smiling solicitously, and Master Filbert bowed most punctiliously, as if she were not in her nightgown with a swollen face and her hair in a pigtail.

  “The hash, if you please.”

  There was a holiday atmosphere around the table, as if an enormous weight had been lifted. Henrietta for once said little, but she found herself taking an inordinate pleasure in Daniel’s relaxation. She knew what this injection of capital meant to him, and the fact that she had been instrumental in acquiring it made her feel warm and glowing inside, as if she need no longer see herself as the impoverished suppliant rescued on a whim, as if she now had a place of her own in Daniel’s life, one that she was in a fair way to earning.

  “I bought you a present this morning,” Daniel said suddenly, his eyes soft on her face. “I left it in the hall when I found you dancing a hornpipe on the table.”

  “A present!” Harry choked on her wine in surprise. “Why would you buy me a present?”

  “Some mad and foolish whim,” he said with a teasing grin, wiping wine from her chin with his handkerchief. “’Twas a risky purchase, too. Such things are not looked upon kindly by those in authority these days.”

  “Whatever could it be?” Her one open eye widened, giving her such a lopsided look that he burst into laughter.

  “It’s in the hall,” he told her. “By the door.”

  Harry leaped to her feet, running into the hall to retrieve the shapeless parcel Daniel had come in with that morning. “I know what it is,” she cried excitedly. “I can feel the shape of it under all this wrapping.”

  “Well, what is it?” demanded Will impatiently.

  “’Tis a guitar,” she said in wonder.

  “I trust y’are as accomplished a player as you said you were.” Daniel smiled delightedly at her pleasure as she pulled aside the wrapping and held up the instrument.

  “Oh, indeed she is,” Mistress Osbert said. “And a most pretty voice.”

  Henrietta flushed at the compliment, stroking the smooth curved wood with a delicate hand before plucking a string, tilting her head to listen to the note. “’Tis a true note,” she said, plucking another string. “Why, ’tis a fine guitar, Daniel. I will teach Lizzie and Nan to play.”

  He nodded, still smiling. “But now will you play for us?”

  “If you wish it.” She brushed a stray lock of hair off her forehead and gave him her own smile, a little shy, as if she would say more but could not for the moment. With a tiny frown of concentration, she plucked the strings almost at random. Then she began to sing, her voice rising sweetly in the quiet room as she sang a haunting ballad of love and loss to the gentle resonance of the guitar. When it was finished, without pause, she launched into a lusty folk song dealing with country matters, her voice mischievously inviting, the strings dancing beneath her busy fingers.

  “Don’t introduce that song to Lizzie for a year or two, if you please,” Daniel said, laughing with the others as she ended on a singing chord.

  “’Tis time we made our farewells.” Amelia Osbert stood up reluctantly. “There’ll always be a welcome for ye both at Osbert Court…and your family,” she added. “Don’t you let Henrietta go running around, Sir Daniel, until the swelling’s gone down. It’ll only make it worse.”

  “I won’t,” he said solemnly. “And I do not know how to thank you enough.”

  “Nonsense!” Amelia declared in dismissal. “If there’s to be any thanking, it’ll be on our part.” And with thanks and protestations on both sides, the Osberts and Master Filbert went out into the cold January night to make their way to their respective lodgings.

  “Will we go home now?” Harry hugged her breasts convulsively in the shaft of freezing air lingering in the hall as the front door closed.

  “Not immediately.” Daniel hustled her back into the parlor. “I have still to see the commissioners at Haberdasher’s Hall, and…” A shadow crossed his face, wiping away the previous warmth and elation. He bent to poke the fire.

  “And…” Harry prompted.

  “And I would wait for the outcome of the king’s trial,” he said, straightening. “I saw him this morning as they were taking him again to Westminster. He was on foot, going to take the barge at Gardenstairs, surrounded by those treasonous louts with their pikes.” His mouth twisted in contempt. “Such a sweet smile he had and a greeting for all his people lining the streets to watch him pass.”

  Harry drew closer to the fire. “What was the mood of the people?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Angry, confused. They were mostly silent. A few muttered ‘God save the King,’ but they were quickly hushed by those around them. Such prayers are considered treason, after all, under Parliament’s tyranny.” He almost spat the words. “God help me, Henrietta, but if they murder His Majesty, then I’ll not stand by.”

  Such deadly purpose infused the quiet statement that she shivered involuntarily. What choice would he have? He had compounded, pledged allegiance to Parliament, in order to protect his family and his lands. Would he renege on that pledge? And if he did, what would happen to them all? Somehow, she could not bring herself to speak the questions, but the day’s satisfactions seemed to have lost their gilt. She picked up the guitar again. “Shall I play some more for you?”

  “If you’ve a mind to,” he responded, but the music did not seem to soothe him, or banish the dark thoughts, and after a while he stood up restlessly. “I think I’ll take the air for a while, Henrietta.”

  “I will accompany you.” She laid aside the guitar and stood up. “’Twill take me but a minute to dress.”

  He shook his head. “’Tis too cold, Harry. Your face will hurt most dreadfully in that wind. Ye’ll be better in bed with a sack posset.”

  The latter prospect was definitely more appealing than venturing forth in her present state, she had to agree, but she could not shake off the conviction that concern for her health was but excuse for his refusal of her company on this occasion. It seemed he felt he could not share the devils plaguing him with one whose political understanding was ill-formed by virtue of her age and sex. She would ask him to instruct her, except that she did not think the request would fi
nd favor in his present frame of mind.

  The tension increased throughout the next week until the day came when Charles Stuart was sentenced to death by beheading, “as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy of the good people of this land.” He was led out of the court at Westminster with the cries of “Justice! Execution!” ringing to the skies as the soldiery bellowed their demand for the blood of the man they believed was responsible for the blood of all those slain during the years of civil war.

  Henrietta was there with Daniel, who stood stark and still as the previously unthinkable became a certainty. All around them rose a hum of voices, some in angry dissent, some in confused dissent, others loud in their support of the court’s sentence. “’Tis God’s law,” an ascetic-looking man beside Henrietta stated with cold precision. “’Tis God’s express words: ‘that blood defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood thus shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.’”

  Henrietta felt the current of anger strike through Daniel as a bolt of lightning will cleave a tree and she was suddenly afraid of what would happen if he loosed that anger here, in this throng. She tugged desperately on his hand. “Let us go back.”

  As if in a daze, he looked down at her face, upturned, anxiety swimming in the big eyes, her temple and cheekbone faintly shadowed with the residue of Sir Gerald’s bruising hand.

  “Please,” she said insistently, tugging his hand again. “Let us go back now. My head aches most dreadfully.”

  Concern sparked in his eyes, banishing the unfocused glare of anguished fury. “What ails you, elf? ’Tis not like you to be sickly.”

  “Oh, I’m sure ’tis nothing,” she said hastily. “Just the wind. But I would go back to the house. If Dorcas will prepare some physick for my head, it will be better directly.”

  “Very well. There is nothing to keep us here anyway.” Acid edged his voice, but he turned toward a side alley, holding Henrietta’s hand firmly. The crowd was breaking up around them, but the mood was somber and scuffles erupted here and there. A stone flew through the air, cracking against the cobbles at Henrietta’s feet so that she jumped back in alarm. Daniel’s grip tightened on her hand. “This place has an unhealthy air,” he muttered. “’Tis no time for a woman to be abroad.”

  “But I am not the only one,” she protested, gesturing to the eddying throng.

  “Most of the others look well able to have a care for themselves,” he said shortly, lengthening his stride so she was obliged to skip to keep up with him. His free hand rested on the hilt of his sword and his gaze was everywhere.

  It was certainly an accurate observation, Harry reflected, looking around her. The women were hard-eyed and grim-faced, their wooden pattens clacking on the cobbles, their frieze cloaks showing signs of much wear. Many of them held small children by the hand or in their arms, and the men who walked with them were marked with toil and poverty, their expressions devoid of expectation. Was this the face of a nation that would applaud the murder of its king? Or would they simply let it happen as an act that had nothing to do with them, an act decided upon by the wisdom of those in power, who must, by definition, know what they were about?

  She would have liked to discuss the question with Daniel but hesitated, afraid to scrape on open sores; and when they reached their lodgings, she was given no opportunity for conversation, serious or otherwise. An attempt to maintain that her headache had somehow miraculously disappeared during the walk home met with an incredulous raised eyebrow, and she was obliged to submit to being put to bed and fed a loathsome draught of Dorcas’s concoction. It must have had poppy juice in it, because she fell heavily asleep long before supper and was dead to the world when Daniel finally came to bed, to lie wakeful, his heart leaden, staring into the blackness as he struggled to come to terms with his own needs and convictions, to weigh practicality with violated belief and loyalty.

  During the next few days, he seemed to retreat into himself. Henrietta tried to pierce his absorption with music and talk, with the softness of her hands and body in the big bed, and when all else failed she tried to persuade him to return to Kent. The commissioners at Haberdasher’s Hall had agreed to a reduction of a thousand pounds in his indemnity, and there was now no business to keep them in the city, but he would not leave London. It was as if he had to wait with his king, for whom he had fought most of his adult life, until the ax finally brought the enterprise to an end.

  Dawn broke on Tuesday, January 30. Daniel rose in silence, dressed in silence, and strode in the same silence down the stairs to the front door. Henrietta ran after him, struggling with the hooks and buttons of her riding habit.

  “I am coming with you.”

  “No, you are not!” he pronounced with ferocious vehemence, more shocking coming as it did after the prolonged silence. “You will stay here within doors until I return.” The door opened, a lance of freezing air thrust through the damp chill of the hall, then the door slammed.

  She stood for a minute, huddling into her still-unfastened jacket, numbed fingers fumbling with the hooks.

  “Come you into the kitchen and feel the fire, m’dear.” Dorcas spoke at her back, one hand rubbing her arm in gentle comfort. “’Tis best to leave him with his devils; and this day is one when evil runs rampant.”

  “Aye.” Henrietta turned and followed Dorcas into the kitchen, where the fire blazed in the range, the lamps burned, defying the lowering gloom of a January dawn, and Joe and the goodman sat stolidly breaking their fast, as if the king was not to die this day at the hands of his people.

  Dorcas set a bowl of curds and white bread before Henrietta, and a redcurrant cordial that instantly brought warmth to the cold, empty pit of her stomach. It was soothing nourishment, which strengthened as it soothed, and Henrietta finally rose from the table with quiet determination.

  “My thanks, Dorcas. ’Twas much needed. I go to Whitehall, now.”

  “Sir Daniel will not be pleased.” Dorcas made the statement neutrally, almost as if she felt it her duty to do so, but her duty extended no further.

  “I will not be excluded from this that touches him so nearly,” Henrietta said quietly. “If my husband is to stand in suffering, a helpless observer, then I too will suffer that. I cannot share it else.”

  “You must do what you must.” Dorcas cleared platters from the table. “But have a care. The streets will be uneasy.”

  “They have been so these past weeks.”

  Dorcas simply nodded. It was for each wife to decide where wifely duty lay. If this one saw it thus, then she would not argue with her. “Joe will go with you.”

  The youth did not look overjoyed at the prospect of the excursion, but his mother slapped his shoulder. “Great lump!” she said. “Get along with you and make sure Lady Drummond meets with no offense.”

  Although she would not have asked for it, Henrietta accepted the escort with relief, and once they were out in the city, her relief became heartfelt. The streets were filled with a tide of people, moving inexorably in the same direction, slow yet purposeful, like some behemoth closing in on its prey. Once they had joined the tide, turning aside was an impossibility. One became a part of the beast.

  Thin, wintery sunshine broke through the clouds as they neared Whitehall, illuminating the scaffold set up outside the Banqueting House. The crowd surged forward, and Henrietta found herself part of a group flowing ahead of the rest. Without intending it she was in the front lines of the spectators, who fell dreadfully silent as they looked upon the scaffold with its grooved wooden block. The executioner stood there already, his long-handled instrument of justice in his hand. The sun caught the wicked curve of the silver blade. What did it feel like to know that your arm would strike off the head of the King of England?

  Henrietta stared at the man as if she could read his thoughts, but the mask lent him an unreal air, separated him from the hard shapes and contours of the real world. She looked around her for the large, bumbling familiarity of Joe and
could not see him. There were just strangers’ faces, registering every emotion from lust to horror as they waited. Panic quivered in her belly. She tried to inch backward, away from her proximity to the scaffold, but the human wall at her back was impermeable. Desperately, she scanned the crowd, praying for a glimpse of Joe, or maybe Daniel. He was here, she knew. But where?

  Then a low murmur grew in the throng, swelling to a sound part anticipatory, part horror-struck as a troop of soldiers emerged from Whitehall gate. Charles Stuart walked in their midst. His head was bare. To see the king bareheaded amongst his covered subjects struck Henrietta as the most dreadful aspect of this dread affair. It was absurd, she knew, to fix upon such a thing, but it seemed to symbolize the almost hallucinatory quality of the morning.

  Now, she could do nothing but gaze as the scene played out before her. The king mounted the scaffold, which was immediately surrounded by ranks of soldiers so deep that when His Majesty turned to address the crowd his voice could not carry far enough. He gave his coat to an attendant, scorned the blindfold, spoke words of forgiveness to his executioner, and knelt. Now there was a silence so immense it seemed impossible it could ever be broken. Sun sparked off silver as the blade rose and fell in one clean, sweeping movement. A mighty groan broke from the crowd; a groan of despair and disbelief; a sound to wrench the vitals, rising, swelling in the air. Tears poured unheeded down her cheeks as Henrietta heard her own keening, mixing with the sound all around her.

  Then someone shouted, the crowd surged, pressed forward, then ebbed as people struggled to break rank. Troops of horses were bearing down on them, their riders brandishing pike and halberd, intent on the speedy dispersal of the grieving throng. One troop marched on them from the direction of Charing Cross, another herded them toward Charing Cross, so that all was confusion as the crowd scattered hither and thither, desperate to avoid the rearing, plunging horses and the prodding pikes.