Now Face to Face (15 page)

Or his lies and deceits, said Mrs. Cox. The Colonel is the fairest of men, she’d said. He is customs officer of the river, was once on the Governor’s Council before quarrels lost him the position and he was too proud and honorable to fight back. And he can survey land, if need be, as well as write up a good, clean will. Colonel Perry left marks, too.

What marks had she made upon life?

“You must rest,” said Thérèse, “so that you look beautiful tonight.”

Barbara frowned down at the gardens.

Do I buy slaves? Can I buy slaves? Can I do as do the others here, and simply close my eyes to its cruelty? Have I a choice? How else will I grow the tobacco I want? She would see Klaus tonight. He had promised to come to her fête. Something was going to happen between them before he sailed away. She could feel it. She drummed restless fingers on a windowsill.

Hyacinthe, what are you doing? Are you behaving? No. He’d been furious that they had left him, but too feverish to accompany them.

That question made her think of others, at home, of her friend Wart, of her lover, Charles. Were they behaving? No. Court was too boring, the routines too stultifying. One had to amuse oneself or die. They never behaved. Tony did, dear cousin, solid and dependable.

Perhaps that’s why I didn’t love you, thought Barbara, you were too respectable for me.

Chapter Seven

W
HAT’S HAPPENING? THOUGHT
L
AURENCE
S
LANE
. I
T WAS
late, very late, past midnight, not yet dawn, and he was in a small tavern in one of London’s great squares, amidst noblemen and hangers-on and whores, most of them the worse for wine. It was the time of night when trouble happened, and it surely was.

“I would never allow any cousin of mine to be spoken of in such a manner,” said the Duke of Wharton.

“I will not allow it,” said Charles, Lord Russel. He stood up, knocking over his chair. “Repeat yourself, sir.”

“Trouble?” Tommy Carlyle said to Slane. “Let us go and see. I do delight in trouble.”

The tavern was quieting, laughter and loud talk dying back, as if others around the quarrel, beginning to sense something was astir, did not want to miss it.

“I said—” A man rose clumsily from his chair. He was loud, drunk, almost shouting out the words.

Who is that man? thought Slane. He recognized the others at the table—Tony, the young Duke of Tamworth; Tamworth’s brother-in-law, Charles; Charles’s friend, the Duke of Wharton. They represented great and pround families; Tamworth and Wharton had been young in 1715, when George came to the throne. The world was theirs, and they had all the time, all the encouragement, all the precedent to while away lives and estates drinking and gambling and chasing whores. There was no war to challenge them, to cool the passions of youth and maleness. They made do with debauchery.

“I said that the Prince of Wales’s bed may be cold this winter, but some Virginian’s will be warm,” said the man, Tom Masham.

You fool, thought Slane. There will be a duel over this, and before his thought was even finished, Tony stood and hit the man squarely in the face.

Slane was surprised, he had been expecting such action from Charles, already on his feet, not from Tamworth.

Everything then became pandemonium. Tom Masham fell back into Slane’s companion Tommy Carlyle, who screamed like a woman. Masham’s whore of the evening screamed louder than Carlyle and jumped on the Duke of Tamworth’s back, beating at him with her fists. Charles fell on Masham, sitting up on the floor as if, thought Slane derisively, Charles would finish what Tamworth had begun. The pair rolled in the sawdust and spilled wine like wrestling boys.

The Duke of Wharton laughed, a demented sound. He was out of the fray, but encouraging it.

“Hit Masham again, Charles!” Wharton was saying. “Tony, don’t allow that woman to touch you. Slap her.”

“I’ll call the watch.”

The tavernkeeper had out his club, but was fearful to use it upon noble patrons. The watch, thought Slane. What help will they be? They were old men whose duties were to walk through the streets and call out the hour and to round up rowdies and drunks. Except that their age made them less than effective, and so did their own predilection for liquor. I should just walk away from this, thought Slane, but he found himself taking hold of the whore by her waist and pulling her off the Duke of Tamworth. She kicked and scratched, but Slane held her arms tight and whispered in her ear cajolingly, confusing her.

“There, there. No need to fight. Come and sit here and let these rude men finish this without your help.”

He saw that Sir Gideon Andreas, who was the King’s banker—soon to be made an earl, it was said—had separated Charles and Masham; Andreas was forceful, broad, tall enough to do it, his stature and age—he was their senior by fifteen or more years—giving him an authority that was obeyed.

Slane left the whore weeping drunkenly and stepped outside, breathing in the night air, clearer by far than that in the tavern. Barbara, he thought, staring up at a lone star or two, you’ve likely caused a duel, and you’re not even here. Are you still as beautiful as when last I saw you? Apparently so.

He turned at the sound of someone stepping out of the tavern. The Duke of Wharton.

“There will be a duel, I know it,” said the Duke.

“You did your best to encourage it. I thought Tamworth was your friend.”

“He is.”

“With friends like you, he does not need enemies.”

“You will use this,” said the Duke—and for a moment, before Wharton went back into the tavern, it seemed to Slane that his eyes gleamed with an unholy light.

Yes. The scandal of this could be used to their advantage to keep discontent against George high. Slane began to walk. The Bishop of Rochester needed something to vent himself on. A wicked, vicious broadsheet about this would be just the thing. Duels were illegal. It would look as though the King could not keep order among his own people. The plan for invasion is on its way, Slane had told Rochester. King James was in Italy; his most trusted advisers—one of them a general in the French army—were in France; therefore, plans had to come from Paris. Rome to Paris to London takes time, said Slane.

Too long a time, replied Rochester. Irascible. Impossible. Impatient. So Slane had been warned of Rochester before coming to England. The warnings were not wrong. In another life, Slane’s given name was Lucius. Keep him to me, Lucius, Jamie had said.

Beloved Blackbird, thought Slane, I miss you. I miss Italy. King James III had dark eyes, like a blackbird’s, and a brown complexion, like a Gypsy’s; he was called Blackbird by his closest friends. In another life, Slane was among those most trusted friends. Lucius, Viscount Duncannon, held vast estates in Ireland, estates he’d never seen, for his family had fled in the early 1690s, when old James II had tried to take back his throne by invasion through Ireland, and the English—victorious—retaliated by beggaring the island. So that, in truth, he was viscount of nothing.

Hordes of Irish and Scots soldiers, nobles, and relatives had descended upon Europe, upon the various courts, to make their way as well as they could, once it was clear that James II would do no more, that William of Orange had defeated him in battle and in spirit, and that they must wait upon his son, Jamie the Blackbird, to take the crown.

Barbara, thought Slane, why do they slander you? I don’t remember you as wicked. And now your cousin Tony may die over you. What havoc you wreak from so far away.

T
HE NEXT
day, the second Duke of Tamworth, Anthony Richard Saylor—the middle name came from his famous grandfather and betrayed his mother’s ambitions—walked into White’s Coffeehouse. Opening the door was like stepping into haze, from the pipes smoked by the men who had been here all of the morning. Tony nodded to the woman who collected the fees for tea or coffee, and sat down at a table near the windows, which looked out onto the street. It was too late in the afternoon for many to be inside with him; now was the time when men who had spent morning and early afternoon in the coffeehouses that were everywhere in London, conversing, smoking pipes, reading the news sheets and letters of shipping news, the advertisements for elixirs, pills, snuff, and rejuvenating waters, posted on the walls, went home for an hour or two to their wives, and dinner.

Following dinner came a walk down the long double row of trees that was the Mall of St. James Park. The purpose of this stroll was to see and be seen. Then, as the sun set, a man went to a play or an opera, or to court if the King should be receiving guests. Or he began the inevitable evening round of taverns, to gamble and drink and talk once more, until late evening, when serious drinking and serious whoring began. The gambling never stopped. Tony had seen friends begin a morning game of cards at a coffeehouse and emerge only the following day. His cousin Harry had won a plantation in such a bout, the plantation where Barbara now was. Tony had been present when Harry had won it.

Tony touched the place on his temple that throbbed persistently. This whole summer had been a nightmare. He could not sleep. He could not eat. He could not think. He had had to look at Virginia upon a map of the world to try to make some sense of Barbara’s unexpected, secret departure. No word from Barbara to him, no letter to explain or ask his blessing or even to say farewell, just the heart-stopping, harsh fact—she was gone—staring him in the face at the end of a long journey to Tamworth.

First love, they said. Calf love. Least said, soonest mended. But what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Barbara was his soul. She had been since he was sixteen. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the table and stared out the window, waiting. He had the long legs of his father and grandfather and their fair hair, which he wore to his shoulders, like a woman’s, but held back with a ribbon, unfashionable in this era of shaved heads and wigs. As a duke, he was allowed this eccentricity; as a duke, he was allowed much—anything, in fact, that he wished. His face was ordinary, neither handsome nor plain. Adimple appeared in one cheek when he smiled, and the smile was grave, shy, so that people who knew him well found themselves watching for it, always surprised, always.

Tony’s brother-in-law, Charles, walked into the coffeehouse. For a moment, Tony could not breathe. Charles, his trusted friend, was his second in what was very likely to be a duel; Charles would have been to see his opponent.

Charles was dressed for a London evening, in satin coat, lace from the shirt underneath showing at the sleeves, a full periwig upon his head, and a black silk patch shaped like a circle on one even cheekbone. If you do not fight him, I will, Charles had said last night, the evenness gone then.

“Masham won’t apologize.” Charles pulled out a chair and sat, sprawling his legs out under the table. “He has chosen pistols. Do you own a pair of dueling pistols?”

“No—yes. My father—I have a pair of my father’s. When is it, exactly, Charles?”

“Four-thirty. Tomorrow morning. Hyde Park. By the two oaks near the road to Piccadilly.”

“H
E IS
still out there, I thought he was waiting for one of the orange girls or one of our actresses, but when Polly went out to him to see, he was not interested.”

“Perhaps he is ill,” said Slane. He put on his coat, then said impatiently, because he knew what Cibber was waiting for, “I will see about him.”

“Thank you, Slane. I don’t pay you enough, Slane,” said Cibber, following the actor past scenery, past the actresses pulling on their gowns behind stacks of furniture.

“There he is,” Cibber whispered.

The Duke of Tamworth had come for the afternoon play and remained where he was through the evening play. Now it was past nine, and still he sat, the only one left in what had been their audience.

Slane, compact, small, lithe, leaped nimbly off the end of the stage, took the lantern Cibber handed him, and walked into the darkness.

He was used to reading men, and in the flickering lantern’s light it was clear the young Duke was in a state of shock. Slane had seen it before, the blank, bereft expression of men on the battlefield after a battle, when they were wounded but not certain where or how badly. How old is he? thought Slane, his eyes moving over the extreme whiteness of Tony’s face. It was a good face, strong, offset by eyes the shade of summer sky. Twenty-and-two or so?