To this Meriel said with simple anger, close to tears, that Tancred had always been a fool, and that she hoped no Westmarcher would turn out to be so deeply embroiled in treasonable conspiracy that she would have to countersign the Citizens’ Justice order for his execution, because from now on, she would not countenance anyone’s execution, no matter what was the spirit of the law.
Juxon then told her that a letter, probably written by Tancred’s youngest brother Ninian, had been found by the Marquis of Southmarch’s intelligence service. Southmarch had been good enough to send a copy to her, which he, Juxon, had taken the liberty of reading. It was disturbing, he said, because it described an excellent method of murdering Southmarch himself. The method would involve the co-operation of at least one man who was close to Southmarch, and the author of the letter had remarked that it was a great pity that when he was one of the Gentleman-Valets at the Island Palace, Knight Auriol Wychwood had wasted a dislike of his patron which might have proved useful on writing a mocking pamphlet. The author added that alas, despite possible appearances, in politics at least Wychwood had always been a worthy provincial full of odious integrity, and would in fact have been a danger rather than a useful man if he had kept his place.
Juxon quoted this description word for word, without comment, for fear of offending Meriel.
“What?” said Meriel. “You don’t mean to say Ninian Conybeare has sense enough to perceive that Wychwood ain’t a traitor and a murderer? You astonish me. No, Juxon, if that’s what the letter said, it can’t have been Ninian who wrote it, and so I shall tell Southmarch. I own that it might possibly have been Endymion.”
For some reason, the insulting compliment to Auriol made her laugh whenever she thought about it; and feeling this to be rather disloyal, she chided herself, and did not tell him about it although she knew he too might think it an excellent joke. She was kept very busy, dealing with the Westmarch repercussions of the plot, and had little time to talk to him in any case. She deeply regretted this, because in the circumstances, it was so hard to remember that in another two weeks this life would be over: and thus she badly needed injections of his company.
*
Sixteen days had passed since their return from the country, and Meriel and Auriol were still at Castle West.
At their last meeting on the cliff-top, the Marquis had explained that she could not leave yet, not while the Conybeare plot was still occupying most of her time and two gentlemen of Westmarch had to be garotted, because it would look both callous and irresponsible. Passionately she wanted her Marquisate to be well remembered. Auriol, understanding, had accepted her decision; then, for the first time since their affair began, he had made passionate, violent, love to Meriel, holding her down as so often she had held him.
Late on the sixteenth night, Meriel was sitting at the faro-table, losing steadily, with her hair untidy and her neckcloth loosened because she was not quite sober. Juxon, arriving at the party, thought he had never seen a more exquisite picture of a dissolute prince than she made, sitting there among the men under a guttering chandelier. He gave her only one discreet glance, before going over to greet his host Mr Florian Sylvester and apologise for his excessive lateness. Florian Sylvester was playing quinze with Auriol Wychwood, who was looking across at Meriel whenever he dared.
Sylvester, a bachelor and a large handsome man, was one of the few men at Castle West who rather liked Juxon. “No, upon my word sir, it don’t signify, very glad you was able to come at all,” he said in response to Juxon’s stricken apology. “Westmarch told me very likely you would not be able to, and it ain’t a formal party, you know, not formal at all.”
“Westmarch?”
“Have you not seen him? Over there. Plunging deep,” explained Sylvester, nodding in the direction of the faro-table. “Which is not his way in the general way. Daresay he ain’t, after all.”
“Is he plunging deep, Knight Auriol? Do you know?” smiled Juxon.
“Good evening to you, sir. No, I don’t,” said Auriol, momentarily laying down his hand. “It’s no concern of mine if he is, though I hope he is not.”
“Or of mine, indeed. He has been a man grown these five years, six years, time flies, and alas, I never could bring myself to be a strict guardian.” Juxon raised his lorgnette to his eyes and blinked through it at Meriel.
“I’m devilish obliged to Westmarch,” said Sylvester. “Wychwood here says he had the greatest difficulty in saving m’cousin from the garotte, but he did it, stood fast despite what the Justice told him so I hear. Unpleasant fellow, Lothair, but his wife wouldn’t have liked it, though it suits her well enough to have him exiled.” He added, “A pity he couldn’t have saved Everard Salamon, and Quintin, too.”
“Unlike your cousin, sir, they were both of them by far too deeply concerned in the affair,” said Juxon, dropping his lorgnette. “A pity, I daresay, that they are not of such low rank as would save them from the honourable, er, penalty. Eh, Knight Auriol?”
“Yes, I collect that Salamon in particular would have preferred to be imprisoned. Westmarch had no notion he was a coward,” said Auriol. Everard Salamon had been one of Meriel’s early, unspoken loves.
Juxon told them, “In their case, the Marquis’s refusing to countersign would have been almost an outrage — in the eyes of the Citizens, to be sure, not in yours.”
“Ay, very true! No knowing what notions they will take into their heads,” remarked Sylvester with teasing sweetness, because Juxon was something lower than a Citizen by birth. “Long whist is your game, ain’t it sir? I know Lucy over by the window there has been wanting a fourth. Do you pray oblige me by obliging him!”
“Sir, I should be only too delighted.”
Meriel had lost roughly two thousand crowns so far at this sitting, and Auriol, despite what he had said to Juxon, did think it his concern. Until they came back from Longmaster Wood, Meriel had never played for high stakes and had preferred piquet to any other card-game, because it required so much skill and she was an excellent player. She had despised faro as a brainless waste of time and money.
Now the Marquis raked in a twenty-crown rouleau as the bank’s card turned up on the livret, and someone called out, “Luck’s turned, I see, Westmarch!” She inclined her smiling head to him. Auriol dragged one hand down his little table, nearly overturning it, his eyes fixed all the while on his own hand of cards.
There was an excitement in deep gaming which Meriel had never recognised till now, and she had discovered that the fascination lay not in winning huge sums, but in losing them. Losing was almost a physical, a faint-making excitement, she thought: comparable to being mastered by Auriol on the cliff-top instead of mastering him, an experience which her body had savagely enjoyed though all the while her mind had revolted, revolted not against Auriol but against herself. There had been no emotional pleasure on either side, she was sure, whatever carnal explosions had been produced by variety. And what had happened then would never be allowed to happen again, thought Meriel, for fear that one new, very small part of her sexual nature would swallow up everything else she was and meant to be. Auriol could have told her that that was impossible, but she had no intention of asking him for his opinion.
Hugo Longmaster was holding the bank, sitting at the opposite end of the table from Meriel. He had recently dyed his hair midnight blue instead of crimson, and in his topknot now there was a pink rose, presented to him by a woman famous at Castle West for her chastity. He was talking about her in an idle voice, full of anxious arrogance. From his place, Auriol could hear snatches of the conversation at the faro-table. He found it very hard to bear, for he knew that Meriel was capable of letting general observation override her own experience, of believing that he, her lover, would sometimes talk or think in such a way. It was true that when he was eighteen and a virgin he had tried to do so. He also knew that she was addicted to listening to and even to taking part in this kind of talk, cold rather than coarse, which made her eyes glitter wit
h hatred. She would hear no such foulness at Wychwood.
The conversation shifted from women to horses, but the minds of Meriel and Auriol remained on the former subject.
Hugo Longmaster said, “Now Westmarch’s new greys seemed to me at first glance to be as fine a pair as one could hope to see, but do you know I think one of ’em in particular is something short of bone.”
This was addressed, indirectly, to Meriel, but though she had her eyes on his ruddy, shining, painted face and idiotic rose, her mind was so much occupied that she could not hear the words for thinking how foul he was. She was pitying and hating other women, hating men more, thinking to herself that she could happily cut off the penis of every man in the room to teach him what it was to be a woman, force him to live as one for a week, and then see him garotted like Everard Salamon, who had turned out a traitor.
“Cousin?” said Longmaster, raising his eyebrows.
Meriel heard that, and focused her eyes upon him properly. “I beg your pardon, cousin, I was not attending,” she said, raising her own brows in return. Everard Salamon, she thought, had been so very beautiful: impossible, enchanting, and homosexual. Half the men at the table were looking at her, waiting. She realised that Hugo was about to attack her.
“I was but wondering whether you do not find those greys of yours a trifle short of bone. Haven’t you had them a sennight now? Only a trifle! But I should not have thought they were worth such a long price as I happen to know you paid for them.”
“My greys? Oh, they’re worth it!” said Meriel, sitting much further forward. She had imagined for a moment that he had been reading her thoughts.
“Thank you, Marquis!” interjected the man who had sold them to her, Mr Drogo Yendal.
“I don’t believe my cousin was provoking you, Mr Yendal,” she said, smiling a little. “Still, let us hear what you have to say, Hugo. Short of bone. What besides? Are you going to call them peacocky? Flat-sided screws? Incurable millers?”
Auriol caught up with the conversation at this point. Meriel’s voice was so quiet that it alerted him.
“My dear Westmarch, I am never rude, or unjust, I hope! Short of bone is all I say — and if you bought them for sixteen-mile-an-hour tits I should be very much astonished to hear that they are in fact what you bought them for. Mr Yendal, pray do not be thinking that I ascribe the smallest blame to you.”
“Do you not, sir!”
“I am no expert judge,” said Philander Grindal, who was seated next to Hugo, and whose mind till now had been on the folly of card-games. “But I should say that for my part I never saw a finer pair, and I know that when I drove out with Westmarch in his phaeton he had the devil’s own work to hold them down to sixteen miles an hour!”
“They were very fresh,” said Meriel mildly. But Hugo had wounded her, because despite Philander’s loyal remarks, the horses were in fact good only for fifteen and a half. It was true that she had had difficulty holding them in: when she bought them, Auriol had told her they were far too strong for her, and asked whether she wanted to break her neck before they left for Wychwood. He had also been angry at the seeming waste of nine hundred crowns. “Do you indeed think me a poor judge of horseflesh, coz?”
“Why no, coz, I should not go as far as that, and I will own that the oddest thing is that you are a capital whip.” The smile he gave her was positively affectionate. Philander Grindal, Auriol and Juxon, listening with covert intensity and not the amused interest of the rest of those present, all hoped that now Meriel would allow the matter to pass.
“Do you suppose,” said Meriel, leaning back dangerously in her chair with her hands in her breeches pockets, and speaking more loudly than before, because it was very important that Auriol should hear her, “that those chestnuts of yours are vastly superior?” Why, she wondered, should she care quite so much.
“But certainly I do, coz.”
“Bravo, Longmaster!” said one tipsy young man.
“Do you mean you agree with him, sir?” said Meriel, swinging her head round. “In that case, I suggest we put it to the test.”
“A race, Marquis! Have a race,” said the young man, blushing and thumping the table. He added with nervous seriousness, looking round: “Put my blunt on both of you.”
“Hush,” Philander Grindal said to him.
“Exactly so,” said the Marquis. “Yes, a race.”
“Ah,” said Hugo.
Meriel was unable to stop a smile trembling on her lips. She knew she ought to be looking very grim. But her hatred of mankind had completely vanished, she was swollen with affection for the world and for Auriol, at whom she dared not look. She said, “A thousand crowns on the table, cousin. The course to be chosen by yourself and the day — shall we say three days’ time?”
Juxon amused his fellow whist-players by seeming to freeze to his seat as he stared at his former ward. Auriol took one look at Meriel and then shuffled his cards with hasty fingers.
“A thousand? Paltry, my dear Westmarch,” Hugo replied. He reached for his brandy-glass and flicked a rouleau with his fingernail. Meriel picked up her own glass.
“I’ll give you odds,” she said.
“Indeed?”
“Ten to one.”
Juxon drew in his breath and Auriol laid both his palms down flat on the table, holding his wrists stiff as though to push himself up on his feet.
Mr Sylvester whispered sympathetically, “Tomfoolery, I know. Devilish dangerous, these curricle races, and Westmarch ought to have more dignity. But damme, shocking or not, it’ll be the event of the season, Wychwood!”
“Dear coz,” said Hugo’s voice softly, “do but consider the circumstances. If I were to lose such a sum I should be obliged to apply to you, as the head of the family, for a loan!”
At this there was a stir of amusement and two shouts of laughter. Meriel was amazed to see that Auriol was one of those who laughed. It was not pleasant. Turning back she said quickly and coolly, her heart beating fast: “Then we’ll say five hundred — ten to one. You are the most complete hand, cousin, I’ll give you that!”
“And the course?” said Hugo. “Do you choose, Westmarch.”
“Round the Circus.”
“Oh, a short course?”
“I wish you to have some little chance of winning, cousin,” said Meriel, looking across again at Auriol, whose head was now held upright in a way that made her long to throw herself down beside him.
“How very kind in you. Very well: I accept!”
“Huzzah!”
“Splendid!” said Mr Sylvester, thrusting back his chair.
“Where’s your betting-book, sir?” said Grindal, turning round. “You keep one, I know, your parties are of such a very unusual nature. Don’t you think we should enter this?” He meant that to go to one of Sylvester’s card-parties was like going to a common gaming-hell in Castle-town, something Meriel never did. There were limits to what was acceptable behaviour in a Marquis.
“Two hundred on you, Westmarch!” said someone.
“I prefer Longmaster’s chestnuts, myself.”
Neither Auriol nor Juxon moved. Nor did Meriel. Sylvester brought out his betting book and grinning, his red-faced guests made their entries, crowding round Longmaster. Meriel received odd glances of curious respect. She waited for Auriol to do something. Seeing him shift at last in his chair, she was seized by the fear that he was about to try and put a stop to her race. He did no such thing, merely whispered his regrets to Sylvester, nodded to the Marquis, and left, without even placing a small wager to show that he had faith in her.
When he had gone, Juxon sighed and said indulgently to one of his companions at the whist table, “Most imprudent, indeed, this is in them both, but I daresay that even the most straight-laced persons will sometimes acknowledge that young men, you know, will be young men! Ah me.” He was far angrier than Auriol at the risk Meriel was taking, the physical, social and political risk.
Meriel watched the door through whi
ch Auriol had disappeared. She meant to go after him as soon as possible. She had realised now that it was none of the obvious things about their elopement which disturbed her: even her fear that as Auriol’s wife she would be faceless as all women were, drowned in her own body, leading a life composed of equal parts of screaming pain and bread-and-butter as every female did, was unreal. She could not honestly believe that Auriol would try to rule her. What she deeply dreaded was contentment, because unlike misery and ecstasy, it was unknown to her, scarcely imaginable. Auriol could make her happy, and happiness, not open femininity, would kill off Meriel Longmaster. What would she do when she was happy, and who would she be?
“It seems that you have emerged the favourite, thus far, coz,” said Hugo.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Race Against Time
Everard Salamon escaped from his prison in the town the day after that card-party in Sylvester’s lodging, and drowned himself in the harbour to avoid the garotte. It appeared that it had not been death itself he feared, but strangulation: he could not bear the thought of his bloated eyes being squeezed quite out of his head. Upon hearing the news, Meriel went to be sick, and Juxon informed her that to continue her race now would be unforgivable. She thought so too, but denied it. She longed to have it over with, and so would not give in. And the race was a distraction she needed, as well as an honourable challenge she could not escape.
*
“Do you think the Marquis will win, sir?” said Rosalba Ludbrook Marling, as her husband edged his phaeton through the press of carriages, swearing under his breath. She had been married for two weeks.
The Marquis of Westmarch Page 20
