Fortune's Soldier Read online

  ‘An illness, Horry. J.J. is attacked by it sometimes. It is called epilepsy.’

  ‘She won’t understand,’ said the Earl.

  ‘Don’t be silly, James. I have never talked down to any of the children, as well you know. How else can they learn?’

  They stood arguing quietly between themselves and Horatia thought that her mother must be the prettiest woman in the world. She had exchanged her blonde ringlets for the latest style of the Apollo knot, with artificial hair pinned on the back of her head to form a chignon, and curls over the forehead. This splendid creation was piled high with flowers and a tiara, and a goodly array of diamonds winked from her throat and ears. And to crown the effect of beau monde Anne wore the latest in skirt length so that her neat silk-clad ankles and minute black satin pumps were prettily displayed.

  ‘I suppose you know best,’ said the Earl eventually.

  He was as handsome as their mother was beautiful. Thick black curling hair — now just starting to streak with grey — crowned his head and a pair of blazing blue eyes looked out from beneath curling jet lashes. J.J. and George had his looks exactly, though Annette Laura favoured her mother with golden hair and a deceptively mild moonstone gaze. Of the baby, Ida Anna, it was a little difficult to tell except that her eyes had a hazelish quality and she already had the habit of pouting her little rosebud mouth if refused what she wanted.

  But Horatia, so everybody said, threw back to her grandmother — the celebrated and beautiful Lady Laura Waldegrave, great-niece of Horace Walpole. Painted by Joshua Reynolds and known as the exquisite of her day, she had brought up five young children on her own when her husband, the fourth Earl, had died after only seven years of marriage. Through her, Horry’s father had inherited Strawberry Hill — Walpole’s little Gothic castle on the Thames at Twickenham.

  Blazing foxcub hair and mermaid eyes had been Horatia’s inheritance from her grandmother, but her determined mouth came from Anne and her love of adventure from James, who had fought under the command of the Duke of Wellington and had taken wagers with his fellow officers as to how many girls he could impregnate in any one year. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately, as somebody had had to curb him — he had reckoned without the forcefulness of the diminutive Anne King.

  His downfall had taken place in Paris where he had been stationed after Napoleon’s ignominious defeat. The year had been 1812 and the entire city had been dancing in celebration, so when the chaplain’s daughter with her childlike stature and downcast eyes had been allowed to attend a ball she had seemed easy meat for Lieutenant Colonel the Earl Waldegrave.

  He often wondered how he could have made such an enormous error of judgement. No sooner had she laid hands on him in the dance than he was a puppet in the control of a master. Little Anne King was bored with her station in life and James was her salvation personified.

  But the Earl had resisted. Lady Laura, his mother, would not approve of his marrying beneath his dignity, he had announced firmly when Anne had told him she was pregnant. So, to the shock of her father and the horror of the officers’ wives, the chaplain’s daughter had borne her first child — John James known as J.J. — out of wedlock.

  ‘Will you marry her?’ someone had asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ the Earl had answered loftily.

  ‘Ah, there speaks one of the wild Waldegraves.’

  He had not seemed quite so wild nor quite so rakish when Anne had stormed into the officers’ mess and deposited a howling and definitely moist infant upon him while she went to visit the sick. Nor had he smiled so broadly when J.J.’s howls had woken the whole barracks in the small hours of a summer night. The Earl’s son had been discovered in a basket with a note attached to his woollen jacket: ‘Kindly feed your child at six. I cannot keep him indoors as my father is taken to his bed with a headache and must not be disturbed for the sake of his health.’

  He should have ignored her, he told himself. Risen above it, pretended she did not exist. But it was not easy in the small army community, and anyway there was something fascinating about her now that she was no longer with child. And she had the prettiest thighs he had ever seen. Slim and brown and leading to the dearest little hips.

  When she told him she was pregnant again he felt the perspiration of doom start out upon his upper lip.

  ‘Well!’ she had said, sitting in a chair as cool as you please and reminding him vividly of a child’s porcelain doll.

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Is history to repeat itself or this time are you to father a child that can succeed you?’

  She had made a telling point. J.J., by the very fact of his bastardy, was forever unable to inherit the earldom. Was the Earl to sire an entire litter of dependants or was he to put this one in line for the title?

  ‘Well?’

  Her exquisite little brows had risen virtually to her hair and her pale blonde ringlets had bobbed. The sixth Earl Waldegrave had swallowed miserably. He enjoyed his extravagant life and had no true wish to change. But she was very pretty and could arouse something in him that he had never experienced with other women.

  ‘I don’t know what my mother will say.’

  ‘It is not your mother who is having the baby.’

  They were married in Paris three weeks later and — as if Fate had intervened in some unnerving manner — four months afterwards, in January 1816, Lady Laura had died at Strawberry Hill. The way was clear for the Earl and the new Countess to return to England.

  ‘But I can’t marry you again the day after George is baptized,’ James had protested vigorously to Anne’s immediate suggestion upon arrival in her new home. ‘What will society say?’

  ‘It will say a great deal more if we are not seen to be married in the eyes of the polite world. Come, come, James. Such reticence is not like you.’

  He was beaten again and so on June 11 the infant George, almost invisible in the massive Waldegrave christening robe, was baptized at Twickenham Church and on the following day John James, sixth Earl Waldegrave, married Anne, Countess Waldegrave. The bride wore cream lace caught tight and high beneath her bust, the skirt — with six ruffles at the end of it — falling to just above her dainty shoe. On her head she wore the tiara belonging to her late mother-in-law and from this a veil bunched out to her shoulders. She was the most beautiful bride Twickenham had seen in years and all the villagers cheered as the bells rang and the organ pealed and she stepped out into the sunlight. Nobody could quite understand why this second ceremony was really necessary, but then it was impossible anyway to follow the way in which the minds of the gentry worked.

  And now the Earl and Countess stood, eleven years later, attired in Court dress, their orders on the blue ribands blazing upon their chests, and bade goodnight to the family that had followed. Of course, there were two that were not there. The Honourable William and the Honourable Frederick had both died in their first year, but Lady Annette Laura, Lady Horatia and the baby Lady Ida Anna had survived. The Earl often felt thankful that he had legitimized George in time, in view of what had followed.

  ‘Will I catch fits?’ said Horry.

  ‘No, my dear,’ answered Anne. ‘You can’t catch fits — they just happen.’

  ‘Why do they happen to J.J.?’

  ‘Enough,’ said the Earl. ‘There’s been enough talk of this. Goodnight, Horatia.’

  He could look handsome even when he frowned as he did now, deep blue eyes narrowed beneath the dark brows which pointed upward at the corners. His daughter looked up at him admiringly.

  ‘Goodnight, Sir.’

  He smiled as suddenly as he had looked angry.

  ‘And be a good girl and quiet while I am out — or I shall tell the King.’

  ‘Would he be cross?’

  ‘Very.’

  *

  Down the slightly sloping floor of the dormitory, which glowed and smelled of a hundred years of beeswax, the marbles ran like a little avalanche. First the big blue one, then two little pear
lies, then the red and the yellow, and finally the pride of the collection; the big green that glowed like a panther’s eye. Outside were the shouts of English boys as they charged about the playing fields of their long-founded school, but Jackdaw was unaware of them. In his mind he was hurtling down an emerald cascade and braving a jungle river, as he watched the spheres run the length of the sloping room and finally come to rest beneath a large and open casement.

  He smiled to himself. He did not mind in the least that his slight disability — the limp that was unnoticeable when he wore his built-up shoe — did, in fact, preclude him from running about with his fellow scholars. Indeed he was rather glad. Let Rob, his amiable puppy of a brother, win the family sporting honours; he — Jackdaw — far preferred to walk and play alone.

  The marbles chinked together with the angle of the floor and he dropped to his knees — a Chinese dragon spitting flame at its enemies — crawling to where they lay. Raising himself on to the window seat he lay stretched out in the autumn sunshine, the cushions comfortable beneath his back and head, his ankles crossed. Outside the shouts of the players drifted into the distance as the game concentrated itself round the farther goal.

  Jackdaw raised the marble to his eye and peered into the world of green spirals and convolutes — some forgotten cavern, even perhaps the centre of the world itself. He was not altogether shocked to feel himself melting into the magic orb.

  But to his amazement, when he passed through whatever barrier time and space and reality had set for him, it was not to find himself in — as he suspected — Merlin’s most secret lair, but on the banks of a fast-flowing river where children swam naked. Brown bodies sent arcs of rainbow droplets high into the air as they dived into the water, and hairless little girls shrieked with fun as they splashed their elder brothers. Even the baby, sitting in her pretty laces, her boots neatly buttoned and pointing up to heaven, managed to get herself waterdewed and her nurse called out crossly, ‘Lady Annette, you’re making Lady Ida quite wet.’

  The boys were well made, thought Jackdaw. The larger, whom the others called J.J., about sixteen with dark curling hair on his head and body; the other — George — so like J.J. that they were difficult to tell apart, except for a bluish streak in George’s hair that ran from brow to nape. That they were high-spirited rogues, the pair of them, was obvious, and even as Jackdaw watched, J.J., hidden beneath the shelter of a willow branch, passed with satisfaction a cascading arc of water into the river below, while George fished into his trousers — lying roughly thrown upon the ground — for a bottle of spirits from which they both took a deep swig.

  ‘In one end and out the other,’ J.J. chuckled, squeezing out a few more drops.

  ‘Lovely feeling,’ answered his brother and joined him in the happy pastime.

  Absolutely sure that they could not see him Jackdaw flicked their naked buttocks hard. Then, coming from behind the sheltering willow, he found himself face to face with her. The last time he had seen the child she had been reflected in a ball above Violet’s cot and now she was before him — naked in the sunshine — her hair like mulled wine with the dampness that made it cling to curls around her shoulders, her eyes water jade reflecting the river light.

  That she saw him for a moment he had no doubt, for she started and said, ‘Who are you?’

  Her elder sister, Annette Laura, about twelve, said, ‘What is it, Horry?’

  But the answer came, ‘Nothing. I thought I saw a boy standing here. But it must have been a trick of my eye.’

  ‘A ghost I expect.’

  ‘A ghost?’ said J.J., returning with George from behind the willow tree, looking well pleased with their schoolboy communings with nature.

  ‘Nothing that you’d see.’ Annette Laura was looking firmly at the bottle that George had thrust, once more, into his trouser pocket. ‘You know that J.J. is not allowed to drink.’

  ‘Be damned to that — it cures me. Now lower your voice or Parkins will be craking like a fishwife. Come on all of you, let’s get back to Strawberry Hill. How about tea in my study, George, with a nice roaring fire?’

  ‘And some hot toddy?’

  ‘Just the thing. Annette Laura, don’t make your mouth Miss Prim. When you’ve a husband to keep you in order you’ll understand such things.’

  They began to pack up their picnic, putting their clothes back on, but as Horatia went to go she turned back with a rather wistful glance.

  ‘What is it?’ said J.J., hoisting Ida Anna on to his broad shoulders. ‘Seen your ghost again?’

  He smiled as he said it, for J.J. believed in nothing but the total strength of one thing — himself, John James Waldegrave Esq. It amused him enormously — made the blazing blue eyes crease with hilarity — to think of his indolent father not stirring himself sufficiently to slip a marriage band onto Anne King’s finger while he had been on the way, thus putting him in line for the Earldom and Strawberry Hill. Not that he cared a damn. All the privileges and none of the responsibilities as far as he could see. He chuckled aloud.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ said Horry.

  ‘Because I’ve decided against toddy. I’m going to crack a bottle of champagne when I get in.’

  ‘Do you drink too much?’

  ‘Far too much. Can you see your little ghost?’

  Horatia stared hard. And Jackdaw in his strange timeless green marble world tried desperately to talk to her, make her look at him.

  ‘No, he’s gone — but not far away.’

  J.J. patted his sister’s gleaming head.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll meet him properly one day.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  *

  ‘Well, I’m going for a walk even if you don’t,’ said Mary Webbe Weston.

  John Joseph groaned aloud. For his fourteenth birthday, two days before, his father had given him a great wooden box containing over a hundred tin soldiers garbed in bright red. A whole regiment was there — the Hussars — in force. And all he wanted to do now was set them up and let them fight a battle with Napoleon’s rag tag and bobtail troops. As he moved them from place to place — complete with miniature horses and cannon — he would make the sound of mortar and grape-shot, booming away to himself until Mary would shout at him, Matilda would stamp her feet and Caroline would beg him to stop. Then his mother would intercede and the usual compromise would be reached. John Joseph must walk with the girls accompanied by the governess, and then he could play Beat Boney until bedtime.

  ‘Always the same,’ he would think. ‘One day I’ll join the proper army and get away from them all.’

  And then he would remember his recurring dream — his fevered death, the woman with autumn hair — and shiver where he stood. And yet the idea of a military life attracted him; being a man amongst men, drinking till the cups were dry, eyeing the girls until they blushed.

  ‘Are you coming or not?’ said Mary.

  ‘Not. Anyway it’s raining.’

  She looked out of the window crossly, saw that he was right and promptly came up with a counter-suggestion.

  ‘Let’s play hide-and-seek in the haunted Chapel — and frighten Caro until she screams.’

  He shot her a contemptuous glance but nonetheless considered the idea silently. He knew he would get no peace from her until he agreed to one of her schemes — and playing in the ghastly rotting Chapel, which his father could not afford to restore, was as good a plan as any.

  He paused, to keep her in suspense, and then said grandly, ‘Very well,’ adding, ‘but then you must play soldiers with me after supper. And you shall take the part of Boney.’

  ‘But I always do so! Could I not be Wellington for a change?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Please let me.’ She was wheedling and grasping his jacket with her plump little hands. ‘Let me, John Joseph.’

  ‘Oh very well,’ he said again. He was like that with women — as personified by his mother and sisters. Constantly agreeing to their pleas to gain a litt
le peace.

  Mary gave him a radiant smile, said, ‘Come on, let’s get the babies,’ and began to hurry towards the nursery door.

  They had always referred to their two younger sisters thus. Not that there was any vast gap in years between the four of them — John Joseph and Mary being four and two respectively when Matilda came along — but because the two younger sisters could not remember London. And London to John Joseph and Mary had been the height of sophisticated dwelling. They had both loathed Sutton Place on sight, and living there had proved to be even worse than either of them had imagined possible. Vast empty corridors, smoking chimneys, a Great Hall dim with antiquity and a Chapel that smelled of damp. That was their lot and they bitterly resented it.

  ‘When it’s mine,’ John Joseph had been heard to mutter darkly, ‘I shall burn it to the ground and clap my hands while it blazes.’

  But now that he was fourteen he knew that he would not, that he would simply close it down and live elsewhere. He wondered if his yearning to join the Army was a symptom of his longing to get away from the sprawling mansion house that had been connected with his family for over three hundred years, or whether he was just born with a love of things military.

  In either event he could not find it in him to like the house and as he and his sister walked down the corridor of the west wing, towards the room in which Matilda and Caroline could be found, he kicked the wall spitefully. As if it knew what he was thinking Sutton Place seemed to shudder and John Joseph felt suddenly guilty. After all, it was not the house’s fault that it had been allowed to grow so miserable and dank. He supposed that when it had first been built and King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn had come to visit — and that was what his father had told him so it must be true — the mansion would have been quite jolly and bright and full of bustling people. Hard to believe now but the fact remained.

  ‘If you kick it like that,’ Mary said maliciously, ‘all the ghosts will come in the middle of the night and take you away. Even Sir Francis waving his head aloft.’