Now Face to Face (102 page)

Quickly, Annie pulled off her cloak, stepped out of the tall heeled shoes she had worn. Jane was still talking of this and that, whatever she could think of—one did not know if a guard or the turnkey might come up the stairs a step or two to listen.

The door must be kept open, for once closed it could be opened again only with a key. She brushed powder on Gussy’s face, while Annie rouged him. Jane found she had to stand quite still for a moment. She saw Annie look sharply at the expression on her face.

Annie took hold of her arm, but Jane shook her off. “I am well. Put on the other cloak. Let us go now, before I lose my courage. Keep the hood of it down. If they don’t notice you, Annie, we may have done it.”

As Jane’s foot touched the bottom stair, she moved quickly across the chamber yet again, saying to Annie, “My dear friend, go and see if my servant is below. She can’t know how late it is. Has she forgotten I’m to give the King the petition? If I don’t present it tonight, he will not receive it at all! Tell her to hurry. I shall be on pins and needles until she arrives. This is dreadful, that she should be so late.”

A guard opened the door, and Jane walked to the top of the stairs with Annie, watched as Annie moved down the stairs. She put her hand to her back, the pain there deep, the cramp in her abdomen growing.

I must hurry, she thought. Half running across the wardroom, she went back up the stairs. Gussy wore the hood that Annie had pulled up over his head. In his hand was the handkerchief Annie had held to her face as she pretended to weep. If no one looked too closely, if they were all half blind, he just might be the weeping woman Annie had played.

Gussy and Jane held hands a moment.

“God fare you well,” Jane whispered.

The moment of truth has arrived, she was thinking. Silly plan, foolish plan, now they catch us.

She took his hand, started down the stairs, chattering wildly, as it seemed she’d been doing for hours. “Well, there is just nothing for it! Come along! Come along! I cannot believe this has happened this night of all nights. Hurry, my dear, hurry!”

Behind her, Gussy had raised the handkerchief to his face, was making weeping sounds, false to Jane’s ears; surely they were as false to the guards’. Jane put her arm through his as they crossed the wardroom, an eternal crossing, it seemed, but here they were at the door, and no one was stopping them.

“For the love of God, run quickly to my lodgings,” she said. “You know where they are. Bring my maid to me. At once.”

She walked with Gussy to the stairs, walked down with him. There was Annie in the downstairs chamber. Jane pushed Gussy toward Annie.

“Don’t look back,” she whispered.

She turned and walked back up, stopping once at the pain, which was bad now. Inside the wardroom, she brushed at tears. She couldn’t help herself.

“The maid will come, Mrs. Cromwell,” said one of the guards.

She stopped where she was, put her hands to her face.

“Don’t weep, Mrs. Cromwell,” said another.

“I’m just going up to say good-bye to my husband; then I must go. I have to give the King the petition.”

She wiped at the tears running down her face, as they all watched. This cannot be happening, thought Jane. They believe me. Any moment one of them is going to say, You’re caught, Mrs. Cromwell. Two women went up to your husband’s cell, and three came down.

Expecting this, her whole body tensed for the words, she walked up the short flight of twisting steps into the cell, talking to Gussy as if he were still there. “There is nothing I can do but leave this moment. Give me a kiss, my darling. If the Tower is still open when I have finished with the King, I will return tonight. If not, I will see you in the morning.”

A long cramp took hold of her and made her gasp. When it was passed, when she thought she could walk, she went to the stairs—everything felt strange now, she felt as if she were moving through water—and shut the door of Gussy’s cell. Now, only the turnkey could unlock it again. She walked down the stairs.

In the wardroom, she said to the turnkey, “I must go. If I finish in time, I’ll return. My husband desires to pray awhile.”

She put another coin in the turnkey’s hand.

“I beg you, allow him quiet this evening. Never mind bringing up candles later. I’ve shut the door. You can go and see, but I beg you, don’t disturb him. I need his prayers this night.”

“God bless you, Mrs. Cromwell, I hope all goes well for you this evening. You’ve my prayers, too.”

The turnkey walked her to the door and opened it himself. Jane walked out to the stairs. Her head was dizzy. Had this happened? Did they sense nothing? Had she taken Gussy from the Tower? Was it this easy?

Three brown cloaks, a woman’s gown and wig, was that all it took?

She waited a moment for a guard to open the door behind her and bellow out her name. It was a silly plan. What on earth had made her think it would succeed? The pain was bad.

Can I walk down these stairs? she thought after a time, when the door behind her remained closed. She did it, walking outside, into growing twilight, walking onto the grounds, as guards moved about lighting candles in the hanging lanterns. She walked through the entrance gate, nodding to the guard there, as always she did. How far away the bridge across the moat seemed; she leaned against the wall, considering it, but there was Annie, hurrying toward her, dear Annie, strong Annie, stern Annie, the Annie of her girlhood and Barbara’s, glorious girlhood, apple blossoms and country charms, fairy cups on the hillock….

“Is he—”

“Safe with your father. Already on his way to Gravesend.”

“Annie—” The word was a sob, for the pain, for the cramp.

“I know,” said Annie, holding her arm, catching her own through it. “Walk with me down this walk, through that arch, yes, keep going, then we will walk through the yard, and then Tim will be waiting for us. We have a carriage for you, my Jane, so that you may rest. Just a few steps. Think of your husband and children waiting, waiting for you in Gravesend, think of your triumph. You’ve snatched him away, yes, you have. Lean on me, and I will see to you, that I promise. Annie is here, Jane. We’ll keep that baby if we can. And if not…well, there will be another one.”

Yes, thought Jane. Annie is here.

I
N
D
EVANE
Square, dusk had come. Barbara walked away from the garden. Philippe, she thought, shall I set you and Andreas against each other for the honor of building on Roger’s square? Smiling at the idea, she walked up the stairs to the first townhouse, unlocked the door, walked up more stairs to the parlor with its windows along three sides. She would be in by Christmas Day. Some furniture was already here in the parlor, covered in cloth. There was a portrait leaning against a wall. She moved the cloth from it. Roger.

I thought I would not get over you, and now I have, she thought. Someone else has my heart, but you’re in there, also. Nothing changes and everything does. It is nearly the New Year. Shall I give you a final gift, Roger, before we part forever?

“Tell us, thou clear and heavenly tongue, where is the Babe that lately sprung? Lies he the lily-banks among….”

Her lovely contralto echoed in the chamber as she sang one of the beautiful carols of the season.

“Bravo.”

It was Colonel Perry standing framed by the doorway. How long had he been there? In one hand was a bottle, in the other two goblets and winter violets from Saylor House’s hothouse.

“Peach brandy,” he said. “I waited at your mother’s, but Bathsheba whispered she had a feeling you’d come here. These were sent you just before I left. Well?”

From Annie, violets for Tamworth’s wood violet. Gussy was rescued. They were on their way to Virginia. Was it possible? Had the great and powerful Walpole been bested by a woman, a meek and quiet woman? Oh, it was too wonderful for words. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to weep.

“It’s done. The fine is relented.”

He poured brandy into the goblets and handed one to Barbara, seeing, as he did so, the uncovered portrait.

“Is that Lord Devane?”

“Yes.”

“A handsome man.” He lifted his goblet. “To triumph over adversity, to courage in the face of fear. The courageous person is not the one who does not feel fear. The courageous feels fear and proceeds in the direction of dreams anyway. To you.” He drank the brandy.

She could feel them, the tears. If I begin weeping, she thought, I won’t stop, but they were seeping out, running down her cheeks, betraying her.

“Tell me.”

Gentle man. Dear friend. Angel. The words stuck in her throat. “Roger, my brother, my marriage, Hyacinthe, the dream, the dream I had.”

Jane. Jane has triumphed. She has her husband and her children. Grandmama. Now you can’t die, for Gussy isn’t going to die.

“Yes. You’ve lost much. Let us drink to that before we leave. It is cold here, and we must go. You must rest from your labors, Barbara; rest is welcome and necessary. Come. Lift your glass, let us drink to all that is gone, all that you’ve lost.”

It seemed to her she drank in more than sweet brandy. Her heart hurt. Life is never finished, said her grandmother, never. That is its terror and its beauty.

“Now,” Colonel Perry said, “let us drink to all that is to come. So much, my dear, so very much.”

A
NNIE LEFT
Tim at the back garden gate of Saylor House, moved quickly down gravel paths, the hood of her cloak over her head so that no one should know her, past the stable, through a side door and up the back stairs to her chamber.

It was done. The last she’d seen of Ashfords and Cromwells, they were awaiting word from the captain to board ship. She boiled water, steeped tea leaves, strained a portion of them out, drank her tea. That done, she looked down at the tea leaves left.

They’d make it safely to Virginia. Mistress Barbara and the Duchess would survive the disgrace. Annie and Barbara were agreed; they’d tell the Duchess of their parts in the escape later, when some of the first noise about it died down. Mistress Barbara. Her life was a wonder. There’d be disgrace over this, but also triumph.

The tea leaves. Sometimes they told too much. A death had been in them just now. Whose? Annie’s mind went moving over all those she’d seen go from this life, the Duchess’s two sons from smallpox, Diana’s children, too. Harry from suicide, the Duke, Richard, from his mind. What was it she remembered from one of the Duchess’s letters, that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said there was a cure for smallpox, a putting of the pox on a small, opened place on the skin. Then fever, a few spots, but nothing more, nothing of the horror and rotting flesh and almost certain death that was smallpox.

Had the cure always existed? Were there other cures existing, out there? Would there be a day when women did not die in childbed and men’s minds did not make them break inside like dried-out twigs? Annie touched her face. Tears for Jane, there.

Mistress Barbara had told them the stories of the fierce Indians of that world across the sea, Indians who sang songs to proclaim their deeds, warriors’ songs, Mistress Barbara had said, rising to the skies like hawks. Did Jane sing now, on the ship, sailing away from here? Sing loudly, thought Annie, proclaim yourself. What is my song? she thought. What is anybody’s? There has to be a song, for us all. It was a round of years, wasn’t it, an up and down, a lesson to be learned, then learned again, until we were spun pure as gold and like the angels themselves.

She touched her face, brushed away the tears, for Jane and Barbara, for two girls who had played at tea under Tamworth’s oaks, girls using acorn tops for cups. Fairy cups, they said. Warriors, now, the both of them.

Spring

…but the greatest of these is charity.

Chapter Sixty-one

B
ARBARA SAT IN
A
LEXANDER
P
OPE’S GROTTO
. I
AM MAD TO DO
this, she thought.

Walpole hanged poor Christopher Layer next month, May. The pitiful man sat in his cell with chains around his ankles. They said he howled like a wild dog in his cell, howling that he had been betrayed, that Walpole had promised life for testimony. But since Gussy’s escape, Walpole had been like a demon. If he could have proved anything against Barbara, he would have. As it was, she knew she lived on borrowed time; somehow he was going to see her disgraced, removed from her office.