Will was a solemn, heavy-jawed, stalwart man in his fifties, a long-standing retainer of the Branford family, so much respected by the old earl that he had agreed to send only Will and two footmen, Peter and Joseph, in Frederick’s retinue.
“Will has travelled extensively,” the earl told Frederick, “and you are too old yourself, my boy, to be accompanied by a tutor as young men are these days on their grand tours. But trust Will in everything. You are clever and well-read but have scarce been away from Cambridge and its countryside all your days.”
There had been a long embrace then from his grandfather and Frederick couldn’t help a moment of puzzlement that having been so lately found he should be sent away where he had no wish to go, but, sadly, it seemed to be obligatory on a member of the nobility to broaden and cultivate his mind to take his place in society.
The embrace from his mother was even longer and more poignant.
“It is what I always dreaded,” she told him. “That revelation would lead to separation.” She, who had been a radiant, laughing mother all his childhood, was struggling to raise a smile to lighten their parting.
“I’ll be back in a year.” He gulped when he said it. A year felt like a life sentence.
But they had set off and Frederick almost immediately found that the hardest thing was learning to travel in luxury.
“My Lord would not wish you to take the diligence” was Will’s first piece of advice when they arrived in Calais. And when they reached Paris, “My Lord would like you to stay in one of the hotels in the faubourgSaint Germain. They have the best reputation.” And all the time, to porters, waiters, beggars, street singers, “A few coins or we will be in grave trouble, my lord.”
“To anyone whose services I use I will be generous but I dislike those who pester me when they have done nothing for me.”
“It is the safest way, my lord.”
Frederick was happiest when he could walk about Paris and view Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Tuilleries Palace and the Invalides hospital, but Will never left his side, warning him of all sorts of dangers if they quitted the main thoroughfares. When they were to go more than a mile or two he insisted that they use the hired carriage and the services of its driver as well as Peter and Joseph. Peter was a shy, quiet youth with a stammer but excellent with horses. Joseph was much older but clever with his hands. If a carriage wheel came off he could fix it. Frederick had no trouble with their company. He had always been friends with the farmhands on his grandfather’s farm. Unfortunately Will Smyth expected them to treat Frederick with distant respect.
The weather turned wet and Will allowed him a day indoors in the Paris hotel to write letters home. Then he laid out a programme for the next few days which included an opera and a visit to view, but not take part in, the gaming tables which were a great feature, he said, of Parisian life.
“I’d like to move on,” Frederick said, wondering if he had any authority to say such a thing. “Paris is a very dirty city and all this rain is turning everything to a noisome slime.”
Will looked out of the window at the clearing sky and made no comment.
The evening became quite radiant. It seemed that Will controlled the weather too. Frederick had no wish to go and see the gaming tables or an opera and he wondered why he should not saunter down to the banks of the Seine on his own. As a small town lawyer he had taken strolls on June evenings to walk by the Cam. With great daring he managed to slip out of the hotel without Will seeing him.
He had strolled about for an hour or so and admired the prospect of the city from the Pont Neuf but, worried that Will would send out search parties for him, he decided to take a shortcut back to the hotel. He soon realised this was a mistake. He thought he had an idea of the general direction but quickly found himself among streets that grew narrower and turned this way and that until he was hopelessly lost. There were still swarms of people about so he hoped to pass unobtrusively among them, but he was disconcerted to find that nearly all stared at him, many laughed and many shouted words of jeering abuse. His own French was stilted and somewhat limited and he could make nothing of these coarse sounds. Perhaps he had been wrong to decline Will’s advice to buy a whole new wardrobe of Frenchified fashion on their arrival. He had been shocked enough at the expense of dressing him up to befit an English lord on his travels. To play yet another role to deny his Englishness was more than he could stomach.
“The English are not loved here, my lord,” Will warned him. “We are allied with their hated enemies the Dutch, my lord, and have won a great battle against them.”
Frederick had begged Will to refrain from adorning every sentence with ‘my lord’ but that he couldn’t be persuaded to do. Now, hemmed in by blackened houses and ragged crowds, Frederick longed for a return to his former existence, his quiet Cambridge house, his daily walk to his office and return to his mother’s plain English cooking in the evening. The death of his wife and baby in childbirth had been a shattering blow but the brief happiness he had had with her had slipped into a golden sliver of time that would always shine in his memory. He had taken his mother into his home and gladly embraced again the dependence of his youth on her strength and steadfastness. That was until she had heard of the Branfords’ lack of an heir and had broken it to him that it was now incumbent on him to fill that place.
Among the many uncomfortable changes that ensued probably the worst was this travelling abroad. A rough shoving by a boy with a barrow of onions made him clutch at the sword that dangled at his hip, another awkward sign of his new life. The boy passed but now a bent old woman accosted him in a high croaky voice.
“Are you lost, sir? You are not safe in these streets.”
He grasped her meaning and nodded vigorously. She put her hand on his sword arm and guided him round two corners to a small filthy courtyard from which there appeared no exit. Straightening up suddenly she gave a manly shout and two men appeared from a doorway and seized his arms. It was three against one for the woman was certainly a man. The shawl had slipped from her head and revealed a chin with a scruffy beard.
Frederick had one second’s thought of his own idiocy in placing himself in this danger. What would Will, what would his grandfather say if he never returned?
He made no resistance. “Take my purse,” he gasped at them in French. “Take anything but let me live.”
They were grinning. “Ay that we will, take everything.”
First they removed his sword, then his hat, new curled wig, coat and waistcoat, feeling in the pockets and sharing out the coins from his purse among themselves. How thankful he was that he always entrusted his passport and other papers to Will who had soon noticed his habit of leaving such things by his bedside in inns. But now he realised the robbers intended to strip him naked.
“Nay, for God’s sake!” he cried in English. Laughing they took his shirt, shoes and fine silk stockings.
“Petits pieds!” roared one of them as his small white feet were exposed to the filthy ground. They felt the fine cloth of his breeches and looked at their own hulking frames.
“Too small but they’ll sell.” They ripped them off him, fingering the fancy buckles and belt.
Frederick stood trembling with shame and shock in his linen drawers.
“Wrap yourself in those ears,” yelled the one disguised as a woman.
Frederick couldn’t help putting up his hand to those obtruding features which had been the bane of his life at school. The men laughed, slapped his face and disappeared by the doorway from whence they had come. Now Frederick realised to his horror that the courtyard was filling with others who had come to gloat at the spectacle of a half-naked Englishman.
Well, he thought, I am alive and I am determined to stay so. Thank you, good Lord. I might have been a mangled corpse. I must face this out.
He straightened his spine, drawing himself to his full height of five and a half feet, and grinned round at the crowd. “Good people, as you see I have been sorely robbed, but
there must be a kind heart among you that will find me a covering and guide me back to the faubourgSaint Germain where you will be amply rewarded.
There was a fight then to be his escort. The largest man, who looked like a carrier of coals, took the soot-encrusted sack from his shoulders and enveloped Frederick in it and marched him off, keeping others at bay with an extended fist.
When they emerged onto a main thoroughfare where elegant ladies and gentlemen were strolling Frederick kept his head bowed and prayed that no one who saw his dirty face and half-naked state would ever recognise him again. Then he heard Will Smythe’s voice.
“Oh my lord! Whatever has happened to you?”
He lifted his head and saw they were actually near the steps of their hotel.
Will must have come out in a panic to look for him.
“Can you not see I have been robbed? Reward this good man and get me inside quickly.”
The man wanted his sack back and haggled with Will over the coins he was handed. Frederick couldn’t help thinking that if he’d fallen into hishands first he would have fared no better than he had. Paris was a fearful place and he was a fool to have ventured out alone.
Will told him so as deferentially as he could when they were back in their hotel room, where Will habitually slept on a mattress on the floor across the doorway.
“I know, I know.”
Frederick was making plentiful use of the water in the ewer and basin provided on a marble-topped stand. First he cleansed his whole head and neck. Then Will emptied the dirty water out of the window and refilled the basin from the jug. Frederick, drying those obtruding ears, told him, “I will never again trust a suspiciouslooking woman and I shall be glad to leave Paris as soon as possible.”
“My lord, this is a hazard of travel anywhere. I advise you to carry one of the good pistols his lordship gave you. The sight of a firearm frightens most robbers.”
“Perhaps we can go on to Versailles tomorrow. Surely one is safe in the palace of the King?”
Will pursed up his lips. “They say there are pick-pockets everywhere but serious violence - ? I think not, my lord. And see, letters have come from England in your absence. We should strive to keep to our expected route so that correspondence can reach us safely.”
When he was clean all over and clad in fresh linen and his bed robe Frederick took the letters and seeing one in his mother’s hand opened it first. How shocked she would be if he wrote to her of his latest experience. He would spare her that anxiety though he might tell her when he was safe home, if that should ever happen. Shaken though he was, he felt a little proud of how he had escaped without injury.
He sat on the bed to read her letter while Will summoned a serving-maid to replenish the ewer with fresh water and brush patches of soot from the floor. Glancing at her as she worked Frederick met her scarcely concealed grin. Yes, he thought, the adventure of the English lord must already be a mighty source of merriment among the hotel’s domestics. The sooner I am gone from here the better.
He finished his mother’s letter and when the maid had gone he said, “Will, let me see my grandfather’s letter. My mother is telling me to follow the suggestion he has made in it.”
With no one else to confide in he needed to treat Will as a friend, difficult as that was, so, when he had read Earl Branford’s letter, he summoned him to sit by the bed, which he did with great reluctance, perching on the edge of the chair.
“Well, Will, I am to seek out a young lady while we are in France. What do you think of that?” The intimate question embarrassed Will. He placed his fingertips together and looked up at the ceiling. “Well indeed, my lord should be always on the look out for an English lady of appropriate rank. The Branfords must have an heir.” He met Frederick’s eyes for a second. “It is some time since your sad loss, my lord.”
Frederick waved a hand to dismiss that still painful subject and a rare moment of intimacy vanished. He laid his hand on the letter. “This is a particularlady we are to encounter if possible. She is the granddaughter of a friend of his lordship from his Cambridge days.”
Will’s eyes lit up. “Ah that could be a Horden from Northumberland, my lord. I was a boot-boy and had the honour to clean the boots of Sir Daniel Wilson Horden when he stayed with the young lord, with your father I should say, before they joined the navy. Is this young lady travelling in France then, my lord?”
“She is staying at the Château Rombeau for the present and Grandfather has sent a letter of introduction to the count there who is evidently her brother’s father-in-law. We could be welcome there for a short stay while I make the young lady’s acquaintance.” He grinned at Will. “Surely we should be safe there even from pickpockets?”
Will was nodding solemnly. “Indeed, my lord. But I feel I should say, knowing a little of the history of the Hordens that the lady would hardly be your equal in rank. Her grandfather, Nathaniel Wilson, of whom I have always heard his lordship speak warmly, became no more than a village parson, although I have seen papers by him on theological subjects in his lordships’ library. He made a name for himself in a small way. It was because he married the daughter of Baronet Horden that he took the name Wilson Horden and they provided the heir, Sir Daniel, who was in turn the friend of your father at Cambridge and a fine, handsome young man as I remember him, unusually tall and with very flaxen hair. He survived the war and married a second cousin whose name I forget but who came from a merchant family in London. Her father, however, was a little mad I believe and became a dissenting street preacher who died in the London plague. I know of these things for his lordship kept up a correspondence with the late Reverend Nathaniel until his death. It is only his great affection for that gentleman that would lead him to propose his granddaughter for his own heir. However, my lord, we will certainly accede to his wishes.”
Frederick suppressed the chuckle that was rising in him at this the longest speech Will had ever made to him. “Well, Will, I thank you for all that information but we mustn’t run ahead of ourselves. My grandfather does not say I am to courtthe lady with his blessing, merely that as there is a friendly connection of longstanding between our families it would be a courtesy to greet the lady and her brother while we are still in northern France. As to rank you know I never aspired to be of the nobility and such distinctions come very hard upon me.”
Will got up. It was plain that he felt uncomfortable and Frederick knew well that what he had just said would make him more uncomfortable still. Will was only too conscious of his master’s inadequacy as an English earl’s son travelling abroad. The scrape I have been in tonight, Frederick was realising, has shamed him even more than me. Poor Will!
“Is it your wish then, my lord,” Will said, “that we make for the Château Rombeau tomorrow?”
“No, we will take in Versailles first for that is westward of Paris I believe whereas the château” – he looked back at the letter – “appears to be in the other direction, towards France’s eastward border. There is no fighting there I trust.”
“None at all that I have heard of, my lord, though there is no news of the great Duke of Marlborough’s movements as yet. Very well, I will alert Joseph and Peter to have the hired carriage and the luggage carts ready for the morrow.” He bowed and departed.
Frederick put his head in his hands, not sure whether to laugh or cry. He took up his mother’s letter and kissed it. “Dear, sweet mother, have you any idea of the pickle you landed me in when you disclosed the true identity of my poor father.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Paris began for Deborah with the waddling figure of Comte Rombeau filling her vision and assailing her ears with his booming commentary on every building of note. On the third morning he was seized with gout and waved a pained hand at her from a couch in the hotel.
“Today was to be Notre Dame. So sad. You and your brother must go alone. No no, not altogether alone. Suzette must walk behind you. No French lady would walk without her maid. But myself – ah it is m
y tragedy.”
And our delight, Deborah said to herself as she backed out with a sympathetic smile.
At Notre Dame it was a shock to see John cross himself with the holy water and genuflect before a statue of the virgin. He did it so easily, even casually, that she was more convinced than ever that he was now a communicating member of the Catholic Church. None of the family had forgotten how impressed he had been by a priest and his chapel as a little boy but it was only to Deborah that he had vowed to become a Catholic when he grew up. It was something a little boy might say in a moment of wonder and no one had made any connections when he fell in love with his French cousin. All the years since then he had continued to take communion in the village church with the rest of the Horden household.
She tapped his arm. “Is everyone expected to do that? I reverence Mary but do not worship her.”
He flushed up. “It’s what they do. Look at Suzette.”
She was kissing the ground before the statue.
“Well I shan’t do it. It’s against my conscience.”
John just shrugged his shoulders and no officials rebuked Deborah. In fact the crowds parading around seemed in no way struck with the awe which began to overwhelm her. She had read about the cathedral before, of the thousands of men who had added towers and windows and carvings decade after decade, but she could only gaze now and marvel that somehow a magnificent wholeness had been achieved. When they went outside again she stood so long just looking at the West Front that John had to take her arm and drag her away.
In a few days the comte’s gout had eased enough to allow them to travel on to Versailles. There Deborah was oppressed rather than uplifted by its grandeur. “It is such a mass of buildings, wall upon wall of little windows. The scale of it and of all this regimented nature leading up to it quite staggers me.”
Worse was the interior of the block allocated to courtiers and their relations. The few rooms for the Rombeau family’s use were small, evidently partitioned out of a larger one. The long passages were dirty and crowded with people passing up and down, even pedlars selling ribbons, buckles and a variety of food stuffs. The sanitary arrangements were extremely primitive.
Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall Page 6
