The Chevalier

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Yes, I know, I must have children. That's why I'm here - to safeguard the Morland line,' she said impatiently. 'I only hope that boy is old enough.’

  Mrs Neville was shocked. In silence she brushed the long tresses smooth, and then said, 'To continue, dear.' She was a conscientious woman, and intended to say the things that must be said, however distasteful. 'There is no need to continue with those things after you are pregnant, and once you have a reasonable number of children, it will be up to you to regulate your husband's animal nature according to your own conscience and the needs of the nursery. If your early children live, you may not need to do it any more after the first few years.'

  ‘Yes, mother,' India said. She smiled at her reflection, watching the way the deep dimples came in her cheeks. She had practised that smile night after night in the shabby little room she slept in, and tried it out, with devastating success, on Monsieur Fragarde. the dancing-master. Poor, silly, dusty, Fragarde. How ridiculous he had looked upon his knees, begging for her favour. How contemptuously she had bid him be silent, chided him for his presumption. It had been exciting, the way he had looked at her, the sensation of growing intensity over the weeks, and that day when, finally, he had broken bounds and kissed her, and let his hand stray to her shoulder, and then to her bosom . . . She had let him, just for long enough, and then jumped up, outraged. Oh, it had been such fun! Briefly her mind flickered towards the quiet little dark-haired boy she was to marry, and a mute enquiry formed itself in her mind. But she dismissed it. No, there would be no excitement there. She would do what she had to, and otherwise please herself. He would give her no trouble. He would be easier to handle even than dusty old Fragarde.

  *

  India stood meekly in her white satin under-gown and bent her head forward so that the maid - the new one, from London, who called herself Millicent - could lift the over-gown over her head. There were a few moments of discreet threshing and flailing before she emerged at the top, and Millicent and Birch pulled the gown down and settled and smoothed the rich silk.

  ‘It's such a beautiful colour,' said Lady Caroline happily. Birch teased out the great fullness of the under-gown's sleeves so that they billowed from India's elbows, and then fastened the clasps. The sleeves of the over-gown were much shorter, and split down the sides, held in two places by the jewelled clips, so that the white satin could be puffed out through the gaps. The over-gown was of a rich and delicate shade between primrose and gold, and the sleeve and bodice clips were set with yellow agates.

  ‘Master Clovis knows cloth, my lady,' Birch said, stepping back to see if she had puffed out both sides evenly. 'He's known it all his life.'

  ‘The colour suits you perfectly, my dear,' said Lady Caroline. In the great bedchamber all the women of the house were assembled to watch the dressing of the bride - all except Cathy, who preferred to talk business with Clovis downstairs. Caroline's gown, of pale lilac silk, was her own favourite colour, although she had grown so pale and thin of late it no longer suited her, though no one would tell her that. She smoothed its skirt lovingly as she sat on the end of the bed, with Mrs Neville on one side and Sabine on the other. Clover, Frances and Sabina made a row along one of the window seats; Clover, now thirteen, looked enviously at India, Frances, ten and a half, was making up stories in her head about it, and Sabina, who was a month off eleven, glared with hatred at India, for she had always planned to marry James Matt herself, and comforted herself by imagining that India was dead and they were dressing her for her funeral.

  India now sat down so that the new maid could do her hair. Here Birch could not compete, for she could not see well enough, though she had dressed the Countess's hair and was certain she knew better than this flighty new girl, who in any case wore too much face-paint for a maid, even a fashionable lady's maid. But Millicent's fingers were nimble and skillful enough.

  ‘The colour's well enough,' Sabine said, 'but it's not to my taste. Too wishy-washy. I like bright colours that you can really see.' She was holding a bowl of candied fruits, and as she spoke she rummaged through them for a sugared apricot, her favourite. She had grown enormously fat of late, and her once pretty features were blurred and distorted by flesh. When she was not eating, she was hunting, and though she now had to have a heavyweight of a horse, she hunted with no less vigour or enthusiasm. Francomb said to Clovis that they didn't need hounds, for it was enough to frighten a stag to death to see Sabine thundering down on it like Jehu, yelling fit to start landslides. Even her riding habits, in defiance of tradition, were in bright yellows and greens. 'Now this,' she continued, wiping her sugary fingers on the mustard-yellow skirt of her gown, 'is what I call yellow.'

  ‘I remember my own wedding,' Lady Caroline said dreamily, 'twenty years ago in this house. It was very beautiful. And even though I was not marrying a Morland, we were allowed to use the great bedchamber. This very bed -' She realized suddenly what she was saying, and stopped abruptly.

  Birch took pity and covered for her by saying, 'This bed is very ancient, made over two hundred years ago for the Master of Morland Place for his marriage. All the Morland heirs have been born in this bed, and many of them have died here too.’

  India gave the great ornate bed a single glance of distaste, and Lady Caroline, intercepting and misunderstanding it, said gently, 'It is a noble duty to provide your husband with an heir. A thing any woman can be proud to do.’

  Sabine, who had notably failed to provide either of her husbands with an heir, said sourly, 'Duty, aye, and let's hope she has better luck than some of us. For the Countess's sons don't look like helping much - one of 'em unmarried, and the other with nothing but a daughter to show. And now his wife's dead, I hear, Caroline? Not that it'd do much good, with him in exile, if she had given him a son.'

  ‘If all did fail,' Caroline asked hesitantly, 'where would the estate go?'

  ‘Cathy's son James, if he should live so long,' Sabine said shortly, and looked at India. 'Better get to it, mistress.’

  *

  Father St Maur performed the ceremony, and though he was old and frail now, his voice still rang clear and steady over the familiar words. All the family other than the exiles, and all the servants, and as many of the tenants as could be crowded in amongst the distinguished guests, attended, for the marriage of the heir to Morland Place was an important event. Matt, in his shyness, looked younger than ever in his beautiful wedding clothes of white-and-gold damask and sapphire-blue satin, and stood awaiting his bride with such an expression of apprehension that Cathy leaned over and whispered to Clovis that he looked as if he had far rather get on his pony and ride back to school for refuge. Arthur, back from Court for the occasion - he had been serving in the household of the Duke of Gloucester, his mother having refused to consider his apprenticeship as an architect - was his attendant, and the big, heavy, red-faced youth looked far more of a bridegroom than Matt.

  Then the bride came in, attended by Clover and, incidentally, by Kithra, who was not accustomed to being forbidden the chapel and had made three attempts to get in. Clement, at the door, fielded the old hound and made him sit at his feet, and smiled at the bride as she went past. She looked very lovely, walking tall and proud in her golden gown, her hair dressed in soft flowing curls, the front part taken back and knotted with white flowers and a diamond clip at the back. Around her throat she wore a necklace of pearls that formed part of the Morland jewels which would be hers to wear for her lifetime; it had originally been a gift from Edmund Morland to Mary Esther Chapham on their wedding-day. The priceless Black Pearls, always traditionally worn by the mistress of Morland Place on important occasions, had disappeared during the Revolution and the attack on Morland Place, either stolen in the sack of the house, or hidden by someone now dead and unable to tell of the hiding place.

  After the Mass came the feast, such a feast as had not been seen at Morland Place since Ralph Morland married the Countess. A small army of cooks had been hired from York and from London, and all t
he family's plate, the store depleted since the days before the civil war, but still impressive, was taken out and polished. The house was decorated with flowers - June was a good month for that - and orange trees in pots flanked the doorways, and over each door was tied a garland of bay and rosemary for good luck, interspersed with heather, representing the Morland family, the whole wound together with ribbons of blue and white silk. In the hall were hung the wooden shields displaying the Morland achievement of arms that had been used at Caroline's wedding, together with a new one shewing the arms of India's father, which she would bring into the family - a white saltire on a red background, differenced with a cross moline.

  Because of the large number of guests, Clovis had decided to serve the feast in the buffet style that the Countess had favoured for her parties, and the tables were set out in the great hall, covered with damask cloths and decorated with flowers and ivy leaves. There were whole geese, salmon, and chickens, a peacock dressed with his tail erect and his breast gilded, scarlet lobsters with their claws erect, and pies - venison, rabbit, chicken, asparagus, Florentine, and crayfish - whose crusts had been built up into representations of various houses, Morland Place, Chelmsford House, Shawes as it used to be before it fell into ruins, Windsor Castle, St James's Palace, Edinburgh Castle, Birnie Castle and, as a centre-piece, Versailles, with all its turrets gilded. There were cold meats and sallets and fruits and sweetmeats, bowls of sugared apricots and comfits, scarlet mounds of strawberries, junkets and blancmanges, and delicious little tarts of stewed fruits - gooseberry, raspberry, blackcurrant, and cherry - covered with custard and mounded over with cream.

  Outside, for the tenants and servants, an ox and pigs and chickens were roasted in the cook-pits, trestles were set up, and ale flowed a-plenty. After the feasting there were entertainments and dancing, during the course of which the couple were ceremonially bedded by the senior members of the family, firmly excluding Arthur in the cause of seemliness. The cup was handed, Father St Maur spoke the blessing, the curtains were drawn, and the elders went away, leaving the bride and groom alone in the dark. The bride's first action on hearing the door close was to leap out of bed, and Matt thought for a moment that she was running away. Not that he would have blamed her -he would have liked to run away himself. He knew nothing of this girl, and though she had appeared very beautiful to him in the chapel when they were married, he could not find any attachment in him for her, which made it seem strange that he was to do such intimate things to her.

  But she only went to the windows and drew back the curtains. It was almost midsummer, and the sky was still filled with a soft afterlight. She stared out of the window for a moment at the revellers beyond the moat, and then came back to the bed, leaving the bed curtains open too.

  ‘I hate to be in the dark,' she said. Matt watched her, dim but visible, climbing in beside him. She did not seem at all embarrassed or nervous, and this daunted him still further. 'It's hateful to be shut up here. I'd far sooner be out there dancing, would not you?’

  Matt did not answer. His bride, still sitting up, leaned over to look at his face, her long hair swinging loose and tickling him. He put a hand up to fend off the hanging silken ropes.

  ‘Or would you not?' she added thoughtfully. 'Have I misjudged you? Have you, after all, an appetite for this, when I thought you had not even the stomach?' He did not quite know what she was talking about, and lay still, like a small animal menaced by a bigger. She ran her hand over his face and then slipped it under the covers, and down his body. He drew in an involuntary breath, and she smiled, but did not remove her hand. 'Come, that's better. It seems you are a man, at least. Well, since it must be done, let's do it.' She removed her hand - to Matt's brief and piercing disappointment - and with swift movements drew off her nightgown, flinging it from her and leaving her strong, white, and womanly body naked. She took Matt's hand and guided it to her breast, holding his fingers to her nipple until it stiffened under his touch. Then she lay down with him, and began manoeuvres of her own. There was silence, except for the sound of their breathing, and the occasional rustle of sheet. Matt, feeling his body stretch itself into unknown spaces of delight, was half joyed and half terrified, for it seemed something was happening without his will or consent. In the dark, she did not seem so much a stranger. From time to time he caught the glint of her teeth when her lips parted in smile or grimace, a light on her hair or eye; her shape seemed already known to him, and the smell of her, sweeter than he had expected, but also stronger, became something he could not remember not knowing.

  ‘There - now - gently, gently - like that,' she said.

  ‘Is this it?' he asked, forgetting that she could not know, any more than he.

  ‘Yes,' she said. 'Slowly, don't rush,' she admonished. ‘Ah!’

  Time was suspended, and he did not notice the dark growing until it was absolute, for he saw with his mind's eye when his physical eye could see nothing. A long dream of unimaginable pleasure spun itself softly around him, and the revellers outside had finished and gone home before Matt drifted off to sleep with his face pressed to his bride's shoulder. The last thing he heard was her voice saying softly, with the glint of a laugh, 'Like a duck to water!' but he was too sleepy to wonder what she meant.

  *

  In the June of i700 Karellie visited Maurice in Florence, and found him working furiously on the last pages of his opera The Martyrdom of St Apollonia. The opera had begun as a romantic comedy, and was translated halfway through to a tragedy by the death of his wife in the course of miscarrying her second child. The first, a daughter whom Maurice had named Alessandra, after her grandfather, was a little over a year old, and flourishing; in the court of Florence, the handsome young widower had no difficulty in finding women willing and eager to care for the child while he plunged himself into his work.

  Karellie came to sympathize, and found his sympathy impossible to give, for Maurice determinedly would not talk about his wife, and turned every conversation firmly from the personal to the musical, and after a while Karellie gave up. He found it difficult to discover what Maurice had felt about his beautiful young wife. On the wall of the apartment hung the portrait taken of Maurice and Apollonia just after their wedding; all the works he had written in the two years of their marriage were dedicated to her; yet he never spoke of her, and his emotional state seemed closer to anger or ecstacy than grief.

  Karellie, between campaigns, had come in the company of a friend, a Venetian nobleman who was, like himself, a mercenary, though not an exile. Francesco was the son of the Duke di Francescini, who had left home to become a soldier of fortune when his father had married a second wife with whom Francesco could not get along. The second wife now being dead, the young man had come to make peace with his father, and had invited Karellie along as a buffer state. The diversion to Florence had not been unwelcome to him: he was willing to postpone the difficult interview as long as possible, and help Karellie to debauch his brother for a few days or weeks in the interests of healing his sorrows.

  ‘In fact,' Francesco said idly one day, 'why don't you come with us to Venice when we move on? It is an essential part of your education - no musician can call himself complete until he has been to Venice, for that is where the soul of music resides.’

  Maurice had heard this from denizens of all the cities of Italy, and was not impressed, but Francesco was insistent. ‘We live for music in Venice. Every action of our lives, from waking in the morning to lying down at night, must be accompanied by music. Our eating, drinking, our devotions, our celebrations, weddings, funerals, everything we do - there is no one in Venice who does not make music in some way. Why, if three men meet on the corner of a square in the course of an evening stroll, they will at once form a band and give a concert, and the passers-by will join in. You must go to Venice, my friend, and the sooner the better. You are wasted here at Florence. In Florence music is merely an art. In Venice it is a passion. It is life itself.’

  Maurice listened wit
h mild amusement but Karellie joined in eagerly.

  ‘Oh do come with us, my brother! I am sure the change will do you good - it will inspire you. You must be growing stale here.'

  ‘Come and stay at the house of my father,' Francesco added. 'He will be delighted and honoured. It will enhance his reputation greatly to have such a talented musician and composer in his house. He is a great patron, you know, and will invite all the most important people in Venice to come and hear you.’

  In such a vein they worked upon him, and though Maurice merely shrugged indifferently, when his opera had been performed with no more than moderate success at the Pratolino he found himself gripped by a terrible feeling of anti-climax. He had been both happy and productive in Florence, but everything now reminded him of Apollonia, and without her presence the palace seemed less bright and beautiful, somehow tarnished. He had adored Apollonia, and made her his inspiration, his Muse. In many ways he had hardly known her - he could not well have said what she really felt or thought about anything, for she was to him a symbol, an image of perfection. He had placed her upon a pedestal and adored her, and had not required or wanted to know that she was flesh and blood. Yet without her, Florence was no different from any other place. He became bored and restless, and soon agreed to go with his brother and friend to Venice.

  He had little to pack, besides his clothes, his instruments, and his manuscripts, for in two years he had never bothered to acquire anything. Apollonia's clothes and trinkets he sold or gave away. Karellie thought that he wanted nothing to remind him of her, that he would even have given away the child if he could. He was certainly prepared to abandon the portrait, but Karellie insisted on removing it from its frame and packing it, and it was Karellie, too, who found a woman, a very young widow named Caterina Birnisi, to take care of the baby. They set off towards the end of July, and travelled slowly, stopping in Bologna and Padua, and arrived in Venice in mid-August.