Now Face to Face (78 page)

B
ARBARA TRAVELED TO
P
ETERSHAM TO SEE
J
ANE
. H
ER THOUGHTS
were a mix—Sir John; Jacobites; Duncannon, who was Slane; Gussy; the dog; Robin—so that even though she stared out the window, she did not notice the fields on each side of the road upon which the carriage moved. Thérèse sat quietly in the carriage with her. Is it only eight days since I’ve been home? Barbara thought. It feels like forever.

The dog was in the chapel vault. Tim would secretly feed and walk it. Her grandmother and Sir John had met in Tamworth’s woods, like conspirators, Barbara standing guard while they whispered angrily to each other:

You’re mad.

You’ll say differently when James is upon the throne.

Bah. The dog is evidence; kill it, said her grandmother.

I can’t, said Sir John. Neither could anyone else. That is why I have it.

I’ll kill it, said Barbara’s grandmother, but she couldn’t either.

Amusing, thought Barbara, that we can plot treason and prepare for war, but we can’t kill a dog.

They were quite close now to Petersham. In another quarter of an hour, or less, she would see Jane.

Fly, ladybird, fly, fly to the man I love best. So she and Jane used to chant as girls. If in October you do marry, love will come but riches tarry. Good St. Thomas, do me right and let my true love come tonight. All the sayings of girlhood. Girlhood was Jane, and now Jane was involved in treason.

Keep her safe, dear Lord. Barbara thought of Jane’s children. The jest was that Gussy had only to drop his breeches for Jane to find herself with child. In the Bible, Sarah was barren, she had no child; Abraham’s Sarah and Roger’s Barbara. Jane had the children for Barbara, one after another. Suffer the little children to come unto me. How shall I bear it, Barbara? Jane had said when her son Jeremy had died. She and Jane had planted pansies and wood violets around his small grave. Kit be nimble, Kit be quick, Kit jump over the candlestick—so she’d used to say to Jeremy and also to her brothers and sisters. What a sweet little boy Jeremy had been.

Something red caught her eye. Gooseberries were in season. They hung bright crimson and tempting on passing shrubs. July was a month of red—pimpernels, poppies, gooseberries. Red for blood. Would Rochester be arrested? Who else? Barbara sat up straighter in the carriage seat. The woman walking upon the road looked familiar.

“Stop the carriage.”

Stepping down from it, Barbara recognized the woman as Cat, one of Jane’s maidservants.

“Cat, I’m Lady Devane, do you remember?”

“Lady Devane. We’re looking for Mistress Amelia. She’s run away.”

“Thérèse, go on to Jane’s. Tell her I too am looking for Amelia and will join her soon.”

“Your gown will be covered with dust—” Thérèse said.

“It doesn’t matter, Thérèse.”

The carriage rolling on without her, Barbara questioned Cat as to where she had looked, then stood a moment, thinking about Amelia, about where she might go.

Petersham was a hamlet, a stop on the road to Richmond; Richmond itself had once been a quiet village, not so quiet now that the Prince and Princess lived at Richmond House part of the year. There were only a few houses in Petersham, and the chapel of ease for those who lived too far from parish churches. Gussy conducted services in the chapel on certain Sundays. Nearby were the river and Richmond Park. The river, had Amelia fallen into the river? Into Barbara’s heart came a sudden, jabbing pang. Hyacinthe. She could see the boy’s body, lying in the barn. Jane must be frantic at Amelia’s absence. Jane would have thought of the river, too.

Crossing a field, dirtying her gown, as Thérèse had said she would, Barbara came to the river and walked along its bank, her mind ranging as she looked for Amelia.

Her mother was gone. She’d left Tamworth yesterday, a day after the others, with all the suddenness of a summer storm. Her mother would not talk much about Robin. I’m not well, Bab, she said. I need time to think on what you say.

The King had set the date for the Duke of Marlborough’s funeral. It was to be in London ten days into August. The Duchess had received a formal announcement from Marlborough’s widow. We’ll have to go, she said. It will be expected. The river flowed by, cool and green.

Hyacinthe, thought Barbara. She had to stop, stand there and breathe in and out for a moment. Amazing how deep, how clever pain could be, hiding away, then striking out. Amazing how swift and hard it did strike when it reared its head. Hyacinthe, I miss you so, Barbara thought. What happened to you, my dear boy and servant and companion and friend? Are you alive? Be alive.

Was that crying? Surely it was. She followed the sound.

And there was Amelia, crying, sitting before a gooseberry bush, her gown wet, dirty, as was her face. There was a red stain all about her mouth, as red as the ribbon on the letter from the King.

The King had sent a special messenger to Tamworth Hall with a letter asking Barbara to come to Hampton Court as his guest and his granddaughters’. It was a great honor to be asked. The letter had arrived as everyone was leaving for Lindenmas. They all had had to read it—Tony, Harriet, Charles, Mary, her aunt, her mother, her grandmother. She was on her way now to Hampton Court. But she had to see Jane first.

“Amelia.”

“Bab!”

The child hurled herself into Barbara’s arms, no question from her that Barbara should show herself again after so long a time, just gladness she was there. Barbara hushed her.

“What is it, my sweet? Why do you cry?”

My child, too, she was thinking. In her mind were Jane and Harry, all the times the three of them had run wild through Tamworth’s fields and woods, never knowing they would grow up and away, never knowing one of them would die. There would be no children for Harry or for her. Jane’s children were their children. Always, Jane had shared them because she was a friend. Friendship, the integrity of it, had never been more important.

“I’ve torn my gown and fallen in the dirt, and I can’t find my way home.”

“I will show you the way home. Plump Amelia,” Barbara whispered into the child’s neck, kissing its round sweetness, “round Amelia, sweet Amelia, gooseberry Amelia.”

But best of all, Jane’s Amelia.

Chapter Forty-six

H
OME FROM HIS VOYAGE, ANCHORED IN
W
ILLIAMSBURG
, K
LAUS
Von Rothbach paid his crew just enough of their earnings to allow them an evening in the tavern, but he stayed on board awhile. It took him time to untangle the threads of himself from the sloop at the end of a voyage. It was always as if he must give the sloop an extra portion of time, as if she were a mistress he must assure of continued loyalty before he abandoned her for shore.

He walked the deck of the sloop, looking her over, making notes to himself of what small repairs she might need, then went below to his cabin and wrote them in his logbook, going over his account of the voyage there. A good voyage. He was a good captain, though these days were ending. When he wed Beth Perry, he’d sail no more. There would be too much land to see to. Had his uncle realized that yet? That when he married Beth, he became an equal in land? Those thoughts in his head, he took a nap in the small bed built along one side, waking to the hush of a hot July afternoon, birds calling to one another, water lapping placidly at the hull.

“I’ll be going in now,” he told the man left on board, who helped him lower the other rowboat and rowed him to the storehouse on the creek, a squat square of clapboard hastily built, the earlier building having been burned by some of the convicts those in England insisted upon settling here.

The keeper of the storehouse, knowing him, came out to greet him. They talked about the Assembly of Burgesses, which had just ended its meeting. They had appointed Spotswood to go up to the colony of New York to make a treaty with the Iroquois; they’d set bounties for the making of naval stores; they had passed an act to improve the staple of tobacco. Now none could be planted after the end of June, and any who received tobacco must obtain a certificate from a justice as to its quality.

Outside, Klaus walked through the pastures at the back of the college building, up the steps onto its back portico, then through the great arch and down the steps into the village, which spread out before him. It was always a shock to him when he returned from a voyage to see how small this village was compared with most of the port towns he visited in the West Indies. There was not even a cobbled street yet, only dusty lanes and alleys. The few taverns and shops and houses were clustered toward the other end, where the capitol building was. He walked out of the college yard and down the main lane of the village to the church, where he crossed to Custis’s house.

Custis was settled at the edge of the village, with few neighbors to bother him, ravine and woods behind him.

Custis was in his garden, on the other side of the ravine, digging up a small tree, gesticulating wildly at the slave helping him. Klaus had brought some seeds from Cuba, but he had forgotten the name for them. No matter. Custis would be happy in the simple sight of what they grew to be.

He waited on a twig bench until Custis finally walked up out of the ravine; the slave with him carried a young tree whose roots had been wrapped in old sacking.

“Good to see you. How was your voyage?” Custis slapped Klaus on the back.

“Do you think to take the entire forest?”

“I steal from her like a thief and hope she forgives me. Here comes your uncle. He’s been before the council. You know Lady Devane left a letter for the Governor? She found a barrel of tobacco and claims you smuggle. The Governor’s trying to have your uncle dismissed from the burgesses, tries to have his office of justice taken away.”

“When did this happen?”

“Right after you sailed, right before she left. It will come to little, be lost once the new Governor comes.”

“New Governor?”

“Byrd and the rest in London have done the deed. Spotswood is Governor no more.”

“You’re certain.”

“Everyone is certain. Spotswood himself announced it, though I heard he gave a letter to Lady Devane to take back with her.”

Valentine Bolling was walking into the yard.

“I’ve lost your cargo and scuttled your sloop,” Klaus said to him.

“Decided to come home, have you? It is good to see you. I’m to be hanged for smuggling. You’ll have to hang beside me, Klaus.”

“I’ve told him,” said Custis.

“Your cargo sold well, more than well,” Klaus said. The West Indies was always hungry for tobacco.

“That’s good. Quitrent tobacco sold at low prices again.” Quitrent tobacco was the tobacco given by planters in the place of coins for taxes due. It was auctioned by the colony several times a year.

“We grow too much tobacco,” Custis said.

Bolling shook his head. “You sound like Edward Perry.”

“I think he is right. I think we’re looking at several years of low prices from our sales in England.”

“I brought a pineapple,” Klaus said. “It is in the house. Tell me about the Governor.”

Inside, as Custis was cutting up the pineapple, Bolling sat down heavily in a chair, took off his wig and put it on his knee.

“We expect a new man any day now. But that is not the news you need to hear, Klaus. One of Carter’s sons sniffs around Beth Perry like a hound. And that Scots overseer of Lady Devane’s found the boy’s silver collar in Odell’s garden. Edward Perry has gone to England to take it to her.”

Klaus stared stupidly at his uncle. The shock was so great that he could not think. With Odell’s death, he had put it all away. “What collar?” he finally managed.

“The boy wore a silver collar with the Devane crest engraved upon it.”

“The Scotsman says murder, and Colonel Perry supports him,” said Custis. “That’s why he has gone to England.”

“Murder?”

The flesh along Klaus’s forearms and at the back of his neck tingled.

“They think Odell Smith killed her slave. Why else would he bury the collar?”