Fortune's Soldier Read online

  ‘Yes,’ Dorothy said slowly. ‘Bring us easement, Cloverella.’

  Dorothy had turned away then and buried her face in her hands. Cloverella had said, ‘Look, Lady Dorothy. I will make it rain flowers upon you.’

  She raised her arm towards the sky, one finger pointing upwards, and willed with all her might that rain might fall disguised as petals. And it had come! But in flakes the colour of blood. The crimson drops — as solid and heavy as snow — had started to swirl about them and the figures of Lady Dorothy and Sir Henry had grown faint in the blizzard.

  ‘Help me,’ Cloverella heard the Lady of the Manor cry. ‘Help me with your magic power. For we are doomed and accursed — the Arundells and the Westons alike.’

  ‘I will do all I can,’ Cloverella had shouted. But even as she spoke she had felt herself vanishing — disappearing from sight — so that nothing was left upon the cobbles of the courtyard but a crimson robe and a crystalline rock that had fallen from the sky beside her.

  Cloverella woke with a dreadful shout and clutched her shawl about her.

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’ said Job the under-gardener.

  ‘Dreaming,’ she answered. ‘Dreaming funny things. Do you ever dream, Job?’

  ‘Now and then. Of food mostly. Pass us that cold game pie.’

  ‘Did Cloverella the Witch ever visit Sutton Place?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Any sign of Mrs Trevelyan yet?’

  ‘No. I reckon she be dead under a snow drift.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ answered Cloverella slowly. ‘I reckon she’s tucked up somewhere nice and cosy and will be back with us before long.’

  Job could not answer for chewing.

  *

  At Strawberry Hill nothing disturbed the night’s quiet. J.J. and his penchant for maidservants had long since removed themselves to Navestock in Essex; while George the only man to equal his brother’s legendary wildness for miles about — lay soberly asleep for once, in the Holbein Room.

  Similarly, in the Tribune, the Earl and Countess slumbered in their large bed beneath the walls of blue watered silk, and the three girls slept undisturbed in the big room overlooking the river. But Horatia was dreaming.

  She dreamed that she was fully grown — a young woman standing upon a big white rock that was not quite out at sea nor yet inshore. On the beach a young man — wearing of all ridiculous things the uniform of the Lancers — was walking towards her.

  ‘Who are you?’ he called.

  ‘You know who I am.’

  ‘Say your name.’

  She was about to do so when another man, whom she had not seen sitting behind her, came and put his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘I love you,’ she said to him. ‘Do you love me?’

  For an answer he just smiled and this made her cry because her feelings for him were so intense.

  ‘Do you love me?’ she called out to the Lancer — but he had vanished. And when she turned round the man beside her had gone again.

  She was alone, with all the misery that conveyed; desolated, isolated, she knew with bitterness the meaning of the word solitary.

  The scene changed and she wandered amongst a great crowd at an exhibition mounted in a palace of crystal. A jolly man with a large moustache had her by the elbow, firmly propelling her towards a refreshment hall.

  ‘I say, Horatia,’ he chortled, ‘what a marvellous thing that you have consented to be my wife. Capital, quite capital. I must be the luckiest man here, what!’

  She turned to look at him with a bleak and miserable eye.

  ‘But I’m not going to marry you,’ she said. ‘You are not the bridegroom. Where are the other two?’

  ‘They’re dead,’ he answered, ‘both dead and gone. It’s me or loneliness you know.’

  And with that she woke up. A dark sticky patch lay on the sheet beneath her and she touched it with a wondering finger. In the silence of the night, telling her nothing of its miraculous approach or its primitive burgeoning within, the moon’s cycle had come upon her for the first time. Womanhood, with all its pain and triumph and power, had begun its progression inside her.

  *

  In the dark hours before dawn Mrs Trevelyan came home to Sutton Place. She was in Mr Webbe Weston’s trap, the pony driven by young Mr John Joseph himself. She was very cold and very tired and her riding habit was badly ripped. She had had, so they said, a nasty fall and had lain unconscious for several hours before Mr John Joseph found her.

  But her maid, pouring jugs of hot water into the hip bath placed before the bedroom fire for her mistress, somehow felt that this was not true. For a smile played about Mrs Trevelyan’s lips and she hummed a snatch of song.

  ‘Tell me, Siddons,’ she said, as she slipped first one and then the other of her slender legs into the violet scented water, ‘are the Webbe Westons really fallen upon hard times as it is rumoured? Or was Sutton Place merely too big for them?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mam,’ the girl answered truthfully. ‘It is said that the house has ruined them — but I don’t know what they have in the bank. The family was certainly very rich once.’

  ‘I see.’ Mrs Trevelyan rubbed herself with some oil from a blue bottle. ‘Where is Mr John Joseph now? Has he gone home?’

  ‘No, Mam. He is in the kitchen with Cloverella and she is giving him some soup. I think he awaits a word from you.’

  ‘Then he shall have one. When I am clean and in my dressing gown you may send him up for five minutes. I shall receive him in my sitting room. It would not be proper for him to see me in here.’

  She glanced around the room, her eyes taking in the graceful hangings and the white draped four-poster. ‘Very good, Mrs Trevelyan.’

  ‘And Siddons ...’

  ‘Yes, Mam?’

  ‘Send up some hot coffee when he comes — I would not like him to complain of my hospitality.’

  She smiled secretively to herself and the maid bobbed a curtsey. She could not wait to go below stairs and report to Cloverella her innermost suspicions.

  8

  The birthday dawned very brightly and fine — hot, lazy and brilliant as any day of high summer should be. From very early morning the river had been swarming with activity — fish jumping up to feel the sun, ducks upending as they chewed the weed, heron flapping their wings and skimming low, eyes alert for prey.

  And in Strawberry Hill the servants had also risen with the sun and set to work to make Horace Walpole’s Gothic castle a gem in every way. Those items of the famous collection that could be dusted or washed had been painstakingly attended to; the Gallery had been swept to a shine and its silver polished; the blue and white striped paper and the deep blue glass of the Breakfast Room glowed with the use of myriad damp cloths. For today the Earl Waldegrave was to be fifty and a grand party had been planned.

  From Navestock J.J. — now twenty-one and more handsome than ever — was to come; and jolly Uncle William and his wife were also to visit. Then there were to be friends and locals and one of the Earl’s brother officers from the old Paris days. It was all very exciting.

  Horatia and Annette, who had grown closer again since the cycle had started in Horry two years ago, had been up early as well; the elder girl putting cucumber and strawberry juice on her face and then carefully painting it with delicate powders and rouges. A young man was to visit and she was agog. The Earl’s old friend Colonel Money was to bring his nineteen-year-old son — already a lieutenant in the Army.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be handsome?’ Annette said to her sister, putting on a dress of blue muslin with wide sleeves and a pelerine of fine white lace.

  ‘It’s possible,’ answered Horatia. ‘But do you care? Wouldn’t you rather he be witty?’

  ‘I should like him to be both.’

  ‘If he is you can reckon he’ll already have a sweetheart.’

  ‘That’s true. Well, in that case, I’ll go for the looks. I can always teach him clever things.
’

  Horatia laughed. She was still a little girl compared with Annette and was not wildly excited at the thought of a young officer coming to visit Strawberry Hill. In fact she considered it fractionally a nuisance that she must dress up in her best pink frock — a colour that had never really suited her — and take a good brush to the curls that tumbled almost to her waist. But still, it was her father’s birthday and a formal luncheon was to be served in the Gallery and J.J. and George would be together again and bound to get up to some excellent japes.

  A tap on the door revealed George himself dressed all in dark green with a flamboyant waistcoat and several dangling seals.

  ‘J.J.’s carriage is coming up the drive,’ he said. ‘Shall we go and meet it?’

  ‘You can,’ answered Annette. ‘I have not finished dressing. Do you like me in this blue, George? Or do you think I would be better in the peach silk?’

  ‘No, the blue.’ George was not really thinking, having one eye to the window to watch J.J.’s progress.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The same shade as your eyes.’

  This was patently untrue but it seemed to satisfy Annette, and George took Horatia by the hand and hurried out before his sister could delay him longer. In the distance, winding up from the entrance that led to Twickenham village, J.J. — leaning out of the carriage window — was waving his high-crowned hat with enthusiasm. Horatia began to run towards him, followed by a noisily breathing Ida Anna, who had seen all the fun from the house. George came behind at a more respectable pace.

  ‘Horry! Ida!’ J.J. was calling. ‘Come here you scallowags.’

  He banged with his cane on the carriage roof and it came to a halt as he jumped out. He swung Ida Anna into the air and looked Horatia up and down appraisingly.

  ‘You’re growing up,’ he said. ‘I think you might make a Beauty yet.’

  George came briskly to join them and Horry was struck yet again by the likeness between them. Though in fact two years separated them, they could have been twins.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ said George. ‘How’s Navestock?’

  ‘One makes one’s own fun.’

  ‘Like that, eh?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  J.J. whispered something in George’s ear and his brother rolled his eyes.

  ‘You don’t improve,’ he said.

  ‘No, thank God, I don’t,’ answered J.J.

  Upstairs the Countess was watching this meeting from the window of the Tribune and she called out to the Earl, who was lying on the bed. ‘J.J. has arrived. Now, there’ll be no quarrels, will there?’

  He did not answer, merely groaning slightly, and she turned to look at him rather sharply.

  ‘James?’

  ‘No, my dear,’ he answered quietly, ‘there’ll be no quarrels. I don’t feel up to it.’

  She crossed over to him and said more gently, ‘Are you quite well?’

  ‘I’ve a touch of indigestion, that is all. It was probably last night’s wild duck.’

  ‘Oh! But you didn’t eat much of it. Well, I hope the pain will pass. I wouldn’t like you to be indisposed upon your birthday.’

  ‘Don’t fret yourself. You go down and see J.J. I shall follow shortly.’

  Anne gave him a penetrating look but the Earl had closed his eyes, wincing a little. She hesitated a second in the doorway.

  ‘Do try to rally, James. There are so many people coming. It just wouldn’t do if you were not there.’

  ‘I will join you very shortly, I promise.’

  And he was true to his word. No sooner had the butler called out the name of the first guests to Anne who, flanked by her children, stood ready to receive them in the Library, than he walked in smartly to take his place beside her. He was very pale but still dashing with his almost grey hair and blue eyes bright and vivid in contrast.

  ‘Father,’ said J.J., when the non-family arrivals had been greeted, ‘I am so pleased to see you. I have missed you.’

  The Earl smiled quizzically. ‘Missed the discipline I expect. How are you, J.J.? How does having your own establishment suit you?’

  ‘Very well, Sir.’

  ‘And the running of the estate? That is going smoothly?’

  ‘Tolerably well, thank you, Sir.’

  ‘Good, good.’ The Earl put his hand to his chest with a little grimace.

  ‘Anything wrong, Sir?’

  ‘Just a touch of heartburn. Fetch me a glass of champagne, J.J. Maybe that will clear it.’

  From the doorway the butler called out, ‘Colonel Archibald Money and Lieutenant Archibald Money,’ and despite his discomfort the Earl was amused to see his eldest daughter clutch Horatia’s shoulder in a sudden flurry.

  The two old campaigners from the Duke of Wellington’s time greeted each other like brothers and it seemed to Anne, who was watching narrowly, that her husband had recovered himself. But at three o’clock when the guests — about eighty in all and packing Strawberry Hill to the very doors — trooped through, chattering and cheerful, to where the feast was spread out on a damask-draped trestle, he took his wife’s arm.

  ‘Are you still unwell, James?’

  A light perspiration bedewed his upper lip and his skin was the colour of parchment.

  ‘I don’t seem to be able to shake off this malaise. After the repast I may just sit quietly with Archie Money. I doubt anybody would notice in the rout.’

  He looked about him to where the assembled throng shoved and pushed cheerfully to get at the food.

  ‘Nobody will miss me,’ he said — and the words had a strange ring to them, sending a sudden inexplicable shiver down Anne’s back.

  But the glasses were being charged and raised in his direction and there was a general cry of, ‘Happy Birthday to the Earl Waldegrave. Good luck to you, Sir,’ and then a shout of, ‘Three cheers.’

  The Earl went to his place at the top of the huge high table and raised his goblet.

  ‘I thank you all for your good wishes on my fiftieth birthday ...’

  He staggered a little and Anne heard somebody whisper, ‘He’s drunk.’ She turned round to give a furious glare and thereby missed the hoarse whisper of ‘Help me!’ which escaped from the Earl’s lips.

  He seemed to recover himself, said, ‘What a charade ...’, turned his eyes up to Heaven and dropped where he stood.

  J.J. and George appeared to spring as one to his side and crouch beside him. Like Gemini they raised him together and J.J. put his ear on to the Earl’s chest. There was a stunned silence in the Gallery, not one of the assembled guests even so much as coughing.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ said J.J. loudly. ‘He’s dead. His heart’s stopped.’

  The quiet was profound; still nobody moved a muscle. Then, without warning, the Countess put her head back — her white profile etched like a statue against the crimson curtains — and opened her mouth. The scream that came out was terrible; ghastly; inhuman.

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘No, no, no.’

  She sprinted forward and threw herself on to the lifeless form that lay cradled in the arms of her two sons. Instantly panic broke out. Half the guests seemed to think it the right thing to crowd forward and see if they could help; the others decided it was best to leave and jammed the small doorway that led on to the corridor. More headed for the curved passage at the far end of the gallery that went to the Round Room.

  A wave of high-pitched cries broke out interspersed with shouts, curses, and even a terrible and noisy fart. Not since George Montagu had come to see the Gallery in Walpole’s day and had been ‘in raptures and screams and hoops and hollas, and dances, and crossed himself a thousand times over’ had there been such an exhibition at Strawberry Hill.

  J.J. stood up, his eyes blazing, and threatened with his fists anybody who came near his father threatening to crush him, while George began to drag the body over towards the windows, Anne clinging to it and screaming all the while. Poor Annette burst into tears and did not even find com
fort in the fact that young Lieutenant Money put his arms round her and held on tightly; whilst Horatia felt the room begin to spin round her, so bizarre and terrible was the situation. Ida Anna stood desolately, tiny fists grubbing at her eyes, in the centre of the surging wave of people, all moving in different directions at once and none of them caring if she was knocked flying.

  In the midst of all the confusion one voice alone rang out.

  ‘Run for the physician,’ Uncle William was bellowing at the footman. ‘Go on, at once. We might still save him.’

  He heaved Anne, who clawed and hissed at him like a cat, off his brother’s body and lifted the Earl unaided to where the fresh air came through an open shutter. Then he, with no knowledge at all of things medical, pumped with his hands on his brother’s chest. But there was no response. The kingfisher eyes were glazed and fixed, the cheeks already streaking white.

  ‘Oh God, God,’ said William, breaking into sobs, ‘How could this have happened? He was only fifty — and today at that — and a stranger to illness.’

  J.J. and George looked at him, both with hot unrestrained tears running freely.

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ said J.J. ‘It is called a heart attack. The heart stops suddenly and violently. Men of his age are often victims, or so I’ve been told.’

  ‘Well I’ve never known such a thing,’ William answered. ‘Is there no previous warning?’

  ‘He thought he had indigestion,’ said George. ‘That must have been it.’

  ‘Let’s get the Gallery cleared for God’s sake.’ William’s voice was urgent. ‘There’ll be a riot in a moment.’

  J.J. jumped on to the table.

  ‘Ladies, gentlemen,’ he shouted. ‘Please go home. There has been a fatality. The Earl Waldegrave is dead.’

  The response to his plea was simply that everybody pushed harder in the doorways. If it had not been for the intercession of Colonel Money it seemed that everything was set for a miniature stampede.