Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  By the end of the second week in September Amber was able to dress and sit in the courtyard for a few minutes every day. Bruce carried her down and back again the first few times but she begged him to let her walk for she wanted to grow strong enough so that they could leave the city. She believed now that London was doomed, cursed by God, and that unless they got out they would die with everyone else. For though she was much better she was still gloomy and pessimistic; her usual attitude was completely reversed. Bruce was so well now that his own confidence and optimism had returned and he tried to amuse her—but it was not easy to do.

  "I heard an interesting story today," he said one morning as they sat in the courtyard.

  He had brought down a chair for her and she drooped in it pathetically. The clothes she had worn while taking care of him he had burned, and the one gown which was left was a high-necked one of plain black silk that made her skin look sallow and drained. There were dark pits beneath her eyes and her hair hung in drab oily coils about her shoulders, but there was a red rose pinned at one temple which he had found that morning while shopping. Flowers had almost vanished from the town.

  "What?" she asked him listlessly.

  "Well, it sounds preposterous but they swear it's true. It seems there was a drunken piper who left a tavern the other night and lay down in a doorway somewhere to sleep. The dead-cart came along, tossed him on top of the heap, and went off. But halfway to the graveyard the piper woke up and nothing daunted by the company took out his pipe and began to play. The driver and link-man ran off bellowing that the cart was haunted—"

  Amber did not laugh or even smile; she looked at him with a kind of incredulous horrified disgust. "Oh— Oh, how terrible! A live man in that cart— Oh, it can't be true—"

  "I'm sorry, darling." He was instantly contrite and changed the subject immediately. "You know, I think I've found the means to get us out of the city." He was sitting on the flagstone before her in his breeches and shirt-sleeves, a lock of his own coarse dark hair falling over his forehead, and he looked up at her now with a smile, squinting his eyes against the sun.

  "How?"

  "Almsbury's yacht's still here, moored at the water-stairs, and it's big enough so that we could take along provisions to last us for several weeks."

  "But where could we go? You can't go out to sea in a yacht, can you?"

  "We won't try. We'll sail up the Thames toward Hampton Court and go past Windsor and Maidenhead and on up that way. Once we're sufficiently recovered not to spread the disease we can go to Almsbury's country seat in Herefordshire."

  "But you said they wouldn't let ships leave port at all." Even simple plans sounded more difficult to her now than preposterous ones would have when she was in good health.

  "They won't. We'll have to be careful. We'll go at night— but don't you worry about it. I'll make the plans. I've already begun to—"

  He paused, for Amber was staring at him, her face almost green, all her body stiffened in an attitude of listening. Then he heard it too—the rumbling sound of wheels turning over the cobble-stones, and a man's distant voice.

  "Bring out your dead!"

  Amber began to sway forward but swiftly he was on his feet and had her in his arms. He carried her back up the stairs to the balcony and through the parlour into the bedroom and there he laid her down, very gently. She had lost consciousness for only a moment and now she looked up at him again. The sickness had left her wholly dependent upon him; she looked to him for all strength and confidence, she expected him to supply the answer and solution for every fear or worry. He was lover, God and parent.

  "I'll never forget that sound," she whispered now. "I'll hear it every night of my life. I'll see those carts every time I shut my eyes." Her eyes were beginning to glitter, her breath came faster with hysterical excitement. "I'll never be able to think about anything else—"

  Bruce bent close and put his mouth against her cheek. "Amber, don't! Don't think about it. Don't let yourself think about it. You can forget it. You can, and you've got to—"

  A few days later Amber and Bruce left London in Almsbury's yacht. The country was beautiful. The low riverside meadows were thick with marigolds and along the banks grew lilies and green rushes. Tangled masses of water-grass, like green hair, floated on the swift current, and in the late afternoons there were always cattle standing at the edge of the water, quiet and reflective.

  They passed a great many other boats, most of them small scows or barges on which were crowded whole families who had no country homes and had taken that means of escaping the plague. But though they exchanged mutual greetings and news, people were still distrustful of one another. Those who had avoided the sickness this long had no wish to risk it now.

  They progressed slowly, past Hampton and Staines and Windsor and Maidenhead, stopping whenever they found a spot they liked and staying there for as long as they liked and then going on again. By the time they had been gone a night and a day London and its dying thousands seemed to be in another world, almost another age. Amber began to improve more rapidly, and she was as determined as Bruce to shut those memories from her mind. When they tried to creep in she pushed them aside, refusing to meet them face to face.

  I'll forget there ever was a plague, she insisted.

  And gradually it began to seem that Bruce's sickness and her own, all the events of the past three months had not happened recently but many years ago, in another life. It even seemed they must have happened to other people, not to them. She wondered if he felt the same way, but she never asked, for it was a subject they refused to discuss.

  For a while Amber was desolate over her appearance. She was afraid that her beauty was gone forever and that she would be ugly the rest of her life. In spite of everything Bruce could say to try to reassure her she cried with rage and despair every time she saw a mirror.

  "Oh, my God!" she would wail dismally. "I'd rather be dead than look like this! Oh, Bruce—I'm never going to look like I did before, I know I'm not! Oh, I hate myself!"

  He would put his arms about her, smiling as though she were a naughty child, coaxing away her fear and anguish. "Of course you're going to look the same, darling. But good Lord, you were mighty sick you know—you can't expect to be well again in only a few days." They had not been long on the yacht when her health improved so much that she did begin to look something like her old self.

  Both of them realized, as perhaps they never had before, how pleasant it was merely to be alive. They spent hours lying stretched out on cushions on the deck, soaking in hot sunlight, that seemed to penetrate to the very bone—and though Bruce lay naked, his body turning a deep rich brown again, Amber kept herself carefully covered for fear of tanning her own cream-coloured skin. They shared everything, so as to enjoy it more intensely: the late summer sky, clear and blue, painted only here and there with a thin spray of cloud. The sound of a corncrake on a dewy morning. The good smell of earth and warm summer rain. The silver-green leaves of a poplar growing just beside a shallow stream. A little girl, standing amid white daisies, surrounded by her flock of geese.

  Later on they began to go into the villages to buy provisions or sometimes to eat a ready-cooked meal, which now seemed a rare luxury and almost an adventure. Amber worried a great deal about Nan and little Susanna, particularly after she found that there was plague in the country, too, but Bruce insisted that she must make herself believe that they were well and safe.

  "Nan's a woman of good sense, and there's no one more loyal. If it became dangerous where they were she'd go somewhere else. Trust her, Amber, and don't make yourself miserable worrying."

  "Oh, I do trust her!" she would say. "But I can't help worrying! Oh, I'll be so glad when I know they're well and safe!"

  Everything that Amber saw now reminded her of Marygreen and her life there with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Matt. It was rich agricultural country, as was Essex, with prosperous enclosed farms, many orchards, quiet pretty little villages usually no more than
two or three miles apart—though often as she knew, so far as those who lived there were concerned it might as well have been two or three hundred miles. There were cottages of cherry brick with oak frames and thatched roofs that lay like thick blankets over them. Morning-glories and roses climbed the walls and clustered about the dormer windows. Pearl-grey doves perched softly cooing on the steep-slanted roof-tops, and sparrows ruffled themselves in the dusty roadway. It seemed to her now to mean peace and quiet and a kind of contentment which must exist nowhere else on earth.

  She tried to tell him something of how she felt and added, "I never used to feel that way about it when I lived there— yet God knows I don't want to go back!"

  He smiled at her tenderly. "You're growing older, darling."

  Amber looked at him with surprise and resentment. "Old! Marry come up! I'm not so old! I'm not twenty-two yet!" Women began to feel self-conscious about age as soon as they reached twenty.

  He laughed. "I didn't mean that you're growing old. Only that you're enough older you've begun to have memories— and memories are always a little sad."

  She digested that thoughtfully, and gave a light sigh. It was just at gloaming and they were walking back to the Sapphire through a low lush river meadow. Nearby they could hear the castanet-like voice of a frog, and the stag-beetles buzzing noisily.

  "I suppose so," she agreed. Suddenly she looked up at him. "Bruce—remember the day we met? I can shut my eyes and see you so plain—the way you sat on your horse, and the look you gave me. It made me shiver inside—I'd never been looked at like that before. I remember the suit you had on—it was black velvet with gold braid—Oh, the most wonderful suit! And how handsome you looked! But you scared me a little bit too. You still do, I think—I wonder why?"

  "I'm sure I can't imagine." He seemed amused, for she often brought up such remnants of the past, and she never forgot a detail.

  "Oh, but just think!" They were crossing a shaky little wooden bridge now, Amber walking ahead, and suddenly she turned and looked up at him. "What if Aunt Sarah hadn't sent me that day to take the gingerbread to the blacksmith's wife! We'd never even have known each other! I'd still be in Mary-green!"

  "No you wouldn't. There'd have been other Cavaliers going through—you'd have left Marygreen whether you'd ever seen me or not."

  "Why Bruce Carlton! I would not! I went with you because it was fate—it was in the stars! Our lives are planned in heaven, and you know it!"

  "No, I don't know it, and you don't either. You may think it, but you don't feel it."

  "I don't know what you're talking about." They were across the bridge, strolling along side by side again, and Amber switched petulantly at the grass with a little twig she had picked up. Suddenly she flung it away and faced him squarely, her hands catching at his arms. "Don't you think that we were meant for each other, Bruce? You must think so—now."

  "What do you mean, 'now'?"

  "Why—after everything we've been through together. Why else did you stay and take care of me then? You could have gone away when you were well and left me alone—if you hadn't loved me."

  "My God, Amber, you take me for a greater villain than I am. But of course I love you. And in a sense I agree with you that we were meant for each other."

  "In a sense? What do you mean by that?"

  His arms went about her, the fingers of one hand combing through the long glossy mass of her hair, and his mouth came down close to hers. "This is what I mean," he said softly. "You're a beautiful woman—and I'm a man. Of course we were meant for each other."

  But, though she did not say anything more about it just then, that was not what she wanted to hear. When she had stayed with him in London, at the risk of her own life, she had not thought of or expected either gratitude or return. But when he had stayed with her, and cared for her as tenderly and devotedly as she had for him—she believed then that he had changed, and that now he would marry her. She had waited, with growing apprehension and misgiving, for him to speak of it—but he had said nothing.

  Oh, but that's not possible! she told herself again and again. If he loved me enough to do all that—he loves me enough to marry me. He thinks I know he will as soon as we're where we can—that's why he hasn't said anything— He thinks I— torment that grew more insistent with each day that passed.

  But not all her brave assurances could still the doubts and She began to realize that, after all, nothing had changed—he still intended to go on with his life just as he had planned it, as though there had never been a plague.

  She wanted desperately to talk to him about it but, afraid of blighting the harmony there was between them—almost perfect for the first time since they had known each other—she forced herself to put it off and wait for some favourable opportunity.

  Meanwhile the days were going swiftly. The holly had turned scarlet; loaded wagons stood in the orchards, and the air was fragrant with the fresh autumn smell of ripe red apples. Once or twice it rained.

  They left the boat at Abingdon and stayed overnight in a quiet old inn. The host and hostess finally accepted their certificates-of-health, but with obvious misgivings and only because Bruce gave them five extra guineas—though their money supply was now almost gone. But the next morning they hired horses and a guide and set out for Almsbury's country home, some sixty miles away. They followed the main road to Gloucester, spent the night there and went on the next day. When they reached Barberry Hill in mid-morning Amber was thoroughly exhausted.

  Almsbury came out of the house with a yell. He swung her up off her feet and kissed her and pounded Bruce on the back, telling them all the while how he had tried to find them both— never guessing that they were together—how scared he had been, and how glad he was to have them there with him, alive and well. Emily seemed just as pleased, though considerably less exuberant, and they went inside together.

  Barberry Hill had not been the most important country possession of the Earls of Almsbury, but it was the one he had been able to have restored to the family. Though less imposing than Almsbury House in the Strand, it had a great deal more charm. It was L-shaped, built of red brick, and lay intimately at the foot of a hill. Part of it was four stories high, part only three; there was a pitched slate roof with many gables and dormer-windows and several spiralling chimneys. All the rooms were decorated with elaborate carvings and mouldings, the ceilings were crusted with plaster-work as ornamental as the frosting on a Twelfth Day cake, the grand staircase was a profusion of late Elizabethan carving and there were gay gorgeous colours everywhere.

  Almsbury immediately sent a party of men to find Nan Britton and bring her there. And when Amber had rested and put on one of Lady Almsbury's gowns—which she did not think had any style at all and which she had to pin in at the sides— she and Bruce went to the nursery. They had not seen their son for more than a year, not since the mornings when they had met at Almsbury House, and he had grown and changed considerably.

  He was now four and a half years old, tall for his age, healthy and sturdy. His eyes were the same grey-green that Bruce's were and his dark-brown hair hung in loose waves to his shoulders, rolling over into great rings. He had been put into adult clothes—a change which was made at the age of four—and they were in every way an exact replica of Lord Carlton's, even to the miniature sword and feather-trimmed hat.

  These grown-up clothes for children seemed symbolic of the hot-house forcing of their lives. For he was already learning to read and write and do simple arithmetic; riding-lessons had begun, as well as instruction in dancing and deportment. Before long there would be more lessons: French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; fencing, music, and singing. Childhood was brief, manhood came early, for life was an uncertain risk at best. There was no time to be lost.

  When they entered the nursery little Bruce, with Almsbury's eldest son, was seated at a tiny table studying his horn-book. But obviously he knew that his parents were coming to see him, for just as they opened the door he looked around with
a quick expectancy which suggested many previous eager glances in that direction. As the horn-book went clattering to the floor, he was off the chair and running toward them joyously. But instantly, at a sharp word from his nurse, he stopped, swept off his hat and bowed with great ceremony, first to Bruce and then to Amber.

  "I'm glad to see you, sir. And, madame."

  But Amber was not in awe of the nurse. She rushed forward, dropped to her knees and swooped him into her arms, covering his pink cheeks with passionate kisses. Tears glistened in her eyes and began to fall, but she was laughing with happiness. "Oh, my darling! My darling! I thought I would never see you again."

  His arms were about her neck. "But why, madame? I was sure I'd see you both again one day."

  Amber laughed and murmured quickly beneath her breath: "Damn the nurse! Don't call me madame! I'm your mother and that's what I'll be called!" They laughed together at that, he whispered "Mother," and then gave a quick half-apprehensive, half-defiant look over his shoulder to where the nurse stood watching them.

  He was more reserved with Bruce and apparently felt that they were both gentlemen from whom such demonstrations were not expected. It was obvious, however, that he adored his father. Amber felt a pang of jealousy as she watched them but she scolded herself for her pettiness and was even a little ashamed. After an hour or so they left the nursery and started back down the long gallery toward their own adjoining apartments at the opposite end of the building.

  All of a sudden Amber said: "It isn't right, Bruce, for him to live this way. He's a bastard. What's the use for him to learn to carry himself like a lord—when God knows how he'll shift once he's grown-up."