A Court Affair (52 page)

As we rode away from Compton Verney, I felt giddy and free; I felt the excitement growing inside me, like a rose from a bud to full bloom. This time I mounted a merry-spirited bay, who pranced along the road and tossed her silky mane, instead of suffering the confines of a carriage that made me feel as if my teeth would be jarred loose every time the wheels dipped into a rut or went over a stone. And I laughed as the blue and yellow ribbons that trimmed my hat flew out and flapped behind me, as if they were waving farewell to Compton Verney and its malicious, murderous master. And at every inn we stopped at along the way, I ate so heartily, I laughed and jested that I was right glad that Pirto had brought along her sewing basket, for she might have to let out my gowns again before long, for “I shall soon be round as a partridge again!”

I was too ashamed, too fearful of facing the revulsion in others’ eyes, to take the waters publicly in the daylight hours, when men and women of all classes freely mixed together in the bathhouse. But being Lord Robert’s wife, I discovered, had certain advantages, and, for a fee, I was able to have the bathhouse all to myself during the wee hours when all the other guests of the spa were in their beds. And for twenty days, at two in the morning, wearing a sheer white bathing smock beneath my buttercup yellow brocade dressing gown, with my hair pinned high and tightly upon my head, as I had been warned the water might leech out its colour, I traversed the long white marble-columned walkway, following a yawning young boy, roused from his sleep by the kitchen hearth, bearing a torch to light my way. I always thanked him kindly and gave him a coin before he left me alone at the door.

I went into the torchlit white marble bathhouse alone. Columns, ridged up and down and crowned with carved bouquets of flowers, and statuary of women, both draped and nude, in the style of ancient Rome, circled the large steaming pool. The bare-breasted women, some missing arms or even their heads, made me shiver as they loomed out at me from the roiling mist, a sight made even more eerie by the flickering torchlight. The ones with heads seemed to stare at me with their blank and sightless white marble eyes. I always hung my robe over the most disturbing one, a headless, armless woman whose perfect breasts seemed to glow, rubbed shiny, one of the bath attendants had told me, by the hands of countless men who always caressed them for luck before entering the bath.

Carefully, I descended the sunken marble steps into the hot, sulphurous, healing waters, walking boldly into the mist. My bare feet slid upon the marble-tiled bottom as the full skirt of my smock floated up and billowed like a white flower about my hips, and the waters caressed my limbs, their warmth seeming to reach beneath the skin to burn the ache and chase any cold right out of my bones. There were several marble benches submerged beneath the water, and I waded across the pool to sit on the one that directly faced the door. I would rest there, up to my neck in water, the vapours caressing my face, until six o’clock, when, bundled back into my robe again, I would emerge into the pale morning light, pausing to listen to the birdsong, as I made the return journey along the marble-columned path back to the inn to fall into bed and sleep the best part of the day away.

The attendant physician visited me every afternoon at three to make sure I was following his instructions and drinking eight tall glasses of water drawn from St Anne’s Well every day, even though I found it acrid and bitter, and it felt as though a snail leaving a nasty, burning trail were crawling down my throat, and to ensure that I did not remain sequestered in my room, “cloistered like a nun,” he teased with mock severity, and walked each day for at least an hour in the pleasure gardens and joined the other guests for the evening’s entertainments.

I did all that he required of me, though I shied away from too close an acquaintance with the spa’s other guests. I was startled to find that in this place of sickness and desperate hope, where ’most everyone was praying for a miracle, a festive, holiday atmosphere prevailed. Everyone was trying to pretend that their ailment was a trifling one, that they had only come because this was such a jolly, fashionable spot to lose a few pounds after indulging overmuch in rich foods—“my decadence at the dinner table has cost me dear!” they would quip—or for a few days’ much-needed rest away from life’s hectic, merry whirl. The gaunt, hollow-eyed consumptives, pale as chalk beneath their flushed cheeks, would hide their bloody handkerchiefs, balling them into tight little balls squeezed tightly in their clenched fists after a coughing fit and say it was naught but a cold; they had been foolish and gone out in the rain or lingered overlong in the garden without a shawl after the evening cool set in. “It’s nothing!” they would say with an airily dismissive laugh while two words hung invisible and unspoken after the exclamation point:
just death!
Yet all of them were grasping eagerly at life, like a hungry infant for its mother’s milk-filled breast, trying to hold on to the one thing they didn’t want to lose, even though they could feel it slipping away beneath their frantically grasping fingers. Saddest of all to see were the ones who realised that it was no use and, with a weary sigh, just let go.

Sometimes, as I left my room in the wee hours to go to the bathhouse, I would see their sheet-shrouded forms being carried out by servants tiptoeing in their stockinged feet so as not to disturb the other guests, wanting no one to come to his door and peep out and catch sight of the corpse. The next day, none of the other guests would mention the missing; it was as if that person had never even been there at all, and any who blundered and happened to speak his name would be greeted by blank stares, as if they had just mentioned a complete stranger.

Even though I did not encourage it, I did not lack for companionship. I had three beautiful new dresses: the first of glossy black satin embroidered with white snowdrops and trimmed with frothy snow white lace, and I wore ropes of pearls with it, and a white lace veil and jaunty curling white ostrich plumes and a brooch shaped like a cluster of flowers made of pearls with emerald leaves on my round black velvet hat; the second a shimmering apple green satin embroidered all over with a shower of pink and white apple blossoms trimmed with white lace and pink ribbons with a French hood to match; and the third a gown and matching hood of palest purple the colour of iced lilacs embroidered with pink and silver thistles trimmed with pink ribbons and silvery lace, and a long rope of pearls the palest hue of pink that looked beautiful with either of the latter two dresses. And whenever I went out to walk, it pleased my pride to see how many men there were so eager to make my acquaintance and squire me about the gardens. Sometimes I had three, or even five, and sometimes as many as
seven
gentlemen of various ages all wanting to walk and talk with me, vying to be the one to take my arm or bring me cups of St Anne’s water and plates of dainty cakes and tarts to tempt my appetite and sit beside me at supper. And if I sat in the garden, even those suffering from gout were all too eager to hobble and limp away to fetch a shawl for my shoulders at the least little nip of chill in the air. Some of them even made so bold as to whisper into my ear when I danced with them or when they sidled close as we watched the acrobats, magicians, dancers, and puppet shows that entertained us at the inn each evening, that they would like to be my lover, to come to me that night, but I fled them all like a frightened rabbit. Though one night, as a display of fireworks, like an exploding rainbow, burst high above our heads in the darkened garden, I let a young man kiss me. But when his hands began to rove and his kisses to grow more urgent, I pushed him away and ran. I ploughed right into the chest of another gentleman, and he also stole a kiss before I whirled, laughing, from his arms. For just a moment I felt light, airy, and carefree, but my feet always, all too quickly, touched hard, solid ground before I too far forgot myself. Though sometimes, when I lay alone, restless and wakeful in my bed, missing a man’s touch and warm skin over mine, the feeling of being full inside instead of empty, I would wonder, if it weren’t for the cancer, would I have had the courage to boldly whisper back, “Come to me tonight; I will leave my door unlocked.”

Though I said nothing of it to the doctor, lest he be shocked and think me a wanton woman with morals lighter than a feather, I suspected that the sultry, hot caresses of the water and the steaming, sulphurous mist against my face inflamed my blood and made it hotter, stirring the lust that had lain dormant inside me. As my smock bubbled up and billowed about my hips when I waded across the pool, I secretly revelled in the rare delight of the bubbling, hot water’s teasing caress between my thighs. It made my knees weak, and I feared they would buckle and I would fall, crashing below the surface to bang my head on the tile floor and drown in waters that reminded me of Hell’s fire and brimstone. And often as I sat upon the sunken bench, I gave in to the urge and let my thighs fall slack and open wide. And there were times, I blush to admit, when I squirmed and sighed and, hidden beneath the water, behind the curtain of swirling hot mist, I let my hand boldly bunch up my smock and my fingers delve between my legs, to probe and explore as Robert’s had once done, though that seemed a whole lifetime ago.

In those days at Buxton I very often found myself stirred by carnal thoughts, and in my dreams, as I slept most of the day away, with the painted ivory medallion of St Agatha resting between my breasts, many a time the bold highwayman Red Jack would clamber through my window in his red velvet cloak and feathered hat to make mad, passionate love to me. When I awoke, I always felt guilty and ashamed, because it was not my husband who coupled with me in my dreams and because I sometimes dared to wonder what it would be like to lie with the men who told me they desired me. Would they be passionate and kind and gentle lovers who did not mind about my breast, or would the desire in their eyes turn to disgust the moment that they saw its ruined and rotted beauty, like a perfect fruit blighted, or would they be rough, hard, and selfish, intent only on their own pleasure? All I did was wonder, and yet I felt as guilty as though I had indeed sinned in the flesh.

After Buxton, I went back to Syderstone. I put on my wedding gown, hoping to recapture some of the joy of my wedding day, but I felt nothing but sorrow as I roamed the crumbling ruins of the abandoned manor, thick with dust and spiderwebs, saying goodbye to the past and farewell to my dreams, knowing that I would never be here again; Syderstone and I were both doomed. In the Great Hall, humming to myself, with a candle in my hand, I danced alone, my naked feet leaving their prints across the dusty floor, a solitary Candlestick Branle. When I glanced up at the gallery, I thought I glimpsed my father watching, smiling down on me, and I cried out, my candlestick clattering to the floor as I fell to my knees and wept.

Instead of feeling light and airy as a cloud, as I walked across the meadow, where the sheep munched clover and thistles, the dress now hung loose and heavy on me, as though its hems were weighted with lead.

I took Robert’s letters with me, the ones he wrote when he still loved me, that I had kept all these years tied up in bunches with yellow silk ribbons. I went back to the bed of buttercups by the river and sat there, with his letters on my lap, remembering how it used to be. The lazy afternoons when I lay there, barefoot in my yellow gown, basking in the sun and the loving words that Robert wrote me, I would close my eyes and hug his latest letter to my heart and
savour
his tender words, reading them over and over again until I had committed them to memory and knew them as though each and every word was written on my heart. I would close my eyes and sigh and melt and ache and long for him as I dreamed of his bold yet gentle caresses and the promises he made that I never doubted then that he would keep.

He used to write me just to say he was thinking of me. He said that I was his life, his world, his heart, his everything, that I made him complete, that when he held me in his arms, he had all he ever wanted or needed. He made me feel so important, so special. He promised that we would soon be together. He marvelled at how blessed we were, to marry for love, to be able to spend the rest of our lives together blissfully happy instead of as indifferent partners in a marriage of convenience, a deal brokered for lands, riches, and titles by power-hungry, socially ambitious parents. We had been given the
greatest
gift of all—
a
true
love
match
!

I felt like a fool now, and a discarded toy a fickle child has worn out, broken, or grown bored with and thrown away, but in those days, when I was young and seventeen, I believed every wonderful, joyous word he wrote or spoke to me. Even across the distance he could
still
touch my heart and make my knees feel weak and the whole of me so warm, and safe, and wanted, as if his words wove for me a cloak of love embroidered with hearts and true lovers’ knots.

I untied the yellow silk, and as I unfolded each letter, my eyes fell on certain tender phrases that now stabbed like daggers into my heart and made the tears fall down like rain to blur the ink:

Another lie, another broken promise. I crumpled it tightly in my hand, squeezing it into a small paper ball, and flung it into the river and watched it bob and drift away, like a loving wife watching her sailor husband’s ship sail out to sea, wondering if they would ever meet again.

Crumple, crumple
—more lies I consigned to the river.

I was too in love to realise that the person he saw reflected in my eyes was the person Robert loved best of all—
himself
!