A Crowning Mercy 02 Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwall

  The lawyer waggled his eyebrows, a sure sign that he was approaching a difficult topic. 'There is always the sad possibility, Lady Campion, that you will predecease your cousin in the sad event of your brother not succeeding to the Earldom.'

  'He means,' the Earl said, 'that all my children will be dead. A united family once more. Go on.'

  'In which case, Lady Campion, the new will provides that your husband will continue your responsibilities, in which discharge he will be aided by Achilles d'Auxigny and by your humble servant.'

  'He means himself.'

  Scrimgeour bowed to her in his chair. 'Your dear uncle and myself are named, in any case, to be your fellow trustees.'

  She smiled, trying to cover her astonishment. 'I'm glad, Mr Scrimgeour.'

  'Oh God! Don't be nice to him. He's a lawyer. He'll have the skin off your back if you're nice to him.'

  'Such wit,' murmured Mr Scrimgeour.

  Her father drew his hand back and pushed himself up on the pillows. 'Your uncle may be French, but he's got more sense than anyone else in the family. As for Scrimgeour, well, he tells me he's honest. He's a lawyer, but he says he's honest. Such wit.'

  Cartmel Scrimgeour let the jibes roll off his ample, sleek flesh. He smiled at Campion. 'Let us fervently hope, Lady Campion, that our advice will not be required, and that your brother will live to a hale, hearty age to be much pleased with his own children.'

  'Amen,' Campion said fervently.

  'But if not,' her father said, 'then you look after Lazen. And I mean you! You'll make the decisions. You'll get advice from Achilles and Scrimgeour, but the power is yours! I know you're a girl, but you've got good sense. You should have been born a boy.'

  'You'd have liked that, father?'

  'Girls aren't much use. All headaches and hair pins.'

  She put her tongue out at him. He laughed and reached for her hand. He held it and looked at her blue eyes. He smiled. 'You may be a mere girl, Campion, but you're the best of my litter.' He ignored her protest. 'Your elder brother was a bore. And Toby?' He shrugged. 'Toby doesn't want the aggravation of it all. He wants to be a hero. I think he fancies a grave in Westminster Abbey.'

  'Nonsense, father.'

  'It's not nonsense. And what it means, mere girl, is that Lazen hangs on a very thin thread. I'm using you to strengthen the thread.'

  She smiled. 'A mere girl?'

  'Which makes it important,' her father said, 'that you choose your husband wisely. However, there is no connection whatsoever between that statement and the next matter I wish to raise. Read it, Scrimgeour.'

  The lawyer dropped one piece of paper and selected another. He licked his lips, peered archly over his spectacles at her, then read from the sheet of paper. 'Lewis James McConnell Culloden, fourteenth…'

  'Forget his titles,' her father growled. He looked at Campion. 'I asked Scrimgeour to find out who he was.'

  She knew she was blushing. She said nothing.

  Scrimgeour smiled at her. 'Went to EtonCollege, of course, but didn't we all?' He laughed lightly. Then Kings, naturally, but did not stay up for his baccalaureate. The family lost their Irish lands, I fear his father was a gambler. Enough was saved from the wreckage for his Lordship, on succeeding his father, to buy himself a commission in the Blues. A most excellent regiment, of course. House in London, very fair, and property in Lancashire, Cheshire and the remnants of a small estate in CountyOffaly. All the latter mortgaged. No scandals, my Lord. He's a communicant member of the Church of England, of course, and he has only spoken twice in the House of Lords; once on the subject of turnips, and the other time he advocated the adoption of the Austrian pattern of cavalry sword. His reputation, my Lord, is as a steady, quiet, solid man, plenty of bottom, whose family has fallen on hard times. He has never married.' Scrimgeour smiled and put the paper down.

  'What he means,' the Earl said, 'is that Lewis ain't got the pox.' Campion blushed, and the Earl smiled. 'Upon which good news, Scrimgeour, I'd be obliged if you left us.'

  Cartmel Scrimgeour stood. He bowed. 'My Lord. Lady Campion.' He walked with immense dignity from the room.

  'Well?' her father said.

  She stood. She walked to the window, rubbed a patch of glass clear of condensation, and stared at the light scattering of snow that had fallen in the night. The hedgerows seemed very black against the unusual whiteness. She hoped it would be warmer for Friday's meet.

  'Well?'

  'Well what, father?' She turned.

  He stared at her. Her beauty was a constant solace to him, more beautiful even than his wife whose portrait, on an easel, had stood these fifteen years at the foot of his bed. 'You're not going to weep on me, are you?'

  'Why should I?'

  'Because my bowels, child, that I cannot control anyway, have started to pass blood. Fenner, who knows nothing, says it means nothing. He's lying. Doctors always lie. They're worse than bloody lawyers. I have pain like the very devil and I'm dying.'

  She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw herself onto his bed, into his arms, and cry.

  She stood still. She looked at him and felt the tears prick at her eyes.

  'Don't weep on me, girl. Weep after I'm dead, but give me a smile while I live.'

  'Father.'

  He laughed at her, held out his good arm, and she went to him, let him hold her, and she cried anyway. His hand stroked her neck. 'Get me a brandy, girl.'

  'You shouldn't drink, father.'

  'It's for you, fool.'

  She laughed. He always had been able to make her laugh. She dried her eyes on his pillow, smearing it with cosmetics, and the look of her face made him laugh. 'Get us both a brandy, girl. Get drunk with your father, not many girls do that.'

  She gave him a small brandy, provoking a snort of disdain, and gave herself an even smaller one. 'Well, father?'

  'Do you want to marry him, eh? Scrimgeour says he ain't poxed, says he's got bottom!'

  She had guessed that the question would be asked when he had dismissed the lawyer so brusquely. She said nothing.

  Her father drained his glass. 'You've been looking miserable as a hound without a nose these last two months. Don't you like him?'

  'I like him, father.' Yet how could she tell her father of her shame? The memory of going to the Long Gallery on Christmas morning, of going in hope that a servant would be waiting there. Each time she remembered it she winced at the thought, at the agonizing embarrassment of the thought. 'I do like him.'

  'If you're not going to drink that, give it to me.'

  She sipped and made a face. 'Here.'

  He laughed, took the glass and drained it. 'He wants to marry you. Stood there like a new-born foal, all twisted legs and shyness, asking for the privilege of your hand. God damn it, girl, it is a privilege. You're the prettiest filly in the country.'

  'Father!'

  He stuck his tongue out at her. 'So I told him to wait for a month. By that time Scrimgeour would have found out his bloodstock and you could give me your answer. So?'

  She shrugged. 'I don't know, father.'

  He watched her as she walked back to the window. He sighed. 'You want certainty?'

  She nodded. 'I suppose so.' On the steamy part of the window, out of his sight, she had drawn a heart. She pierced the heart with an arrow. At the feathered end she traced her initials, CL. With a slow finger, with trepidation, she put a C beside the point of the arrow, and then crooked a line to make it into a G. She rubbed it out, full of shame, despising herself, unable to explain it to herself, wishing she had the sense and practicality that everyone else claimed to see in her.

  Her father patted the bed beside him. 'Come and sit.'

  He looked at the portrait of his wife, and then at Campion. 'Would you say your mother and I were happily married?'

  She nodded. She had only seen them together when she was very small, but she remembered their laughter.

  He smiled. 'I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. I know Madeleine wasn't sure. C
ertainty isn't part of it.'

  'It isn't?'

  'No.' He shook his head. 'But we were happy. You grow into it. It's a responsibility. God, I'm being serious. It must be death creeping up on me.'

  She smiled because he wanted her to smile. She took his hand, seeing how thin it was, how his wedding ring hung loose on his finger. She raised the hand to her lips and kissed it. 'I love you, father.'

  'Christ! You want me to cry?'

  'No.'

  He smiled. 'Can you love Lewis?'

  'Should I?'

  He shrugged. 'I don't know, child. I know one thing. I'm going to die, and not all the liars in England can stop that happening, and when I do die, my child, the wolves are going to come to Lazen. And if Toby's dead then you'll have to stop Julius stripping the flesh off Lazen's bones,'

  'Toby should come home.'

  'I know. But bloody Paunceley wants him, bloody Paunceley would. And you can't blame Toby, my child, because a young man should go out and dare the world. So let him be.' He squeezed her hand. 'But if Toby dies, then every bastard in the kingdom will try to take Lazen. You need a man beside you, a good man, a strong one.'

  'Because I'm just a girl? All headaches and hair pins?'

  He laughed. 'All tits and troubles, eh?'

  'Father!'

  He laughed again, the laughter turning into pain. 'And if you die, my dear child, and women do die in childbirth like your mother did, then I need to know that a man, good and strong, is holding this Castle against the crucifying bastards.'

  'You want me to marry Lewis, father?'

  'Is there anyone else?' he teased her.

  She thrust the thought away, the ridiculous, stupid, demeaning, flighty thought, and shook her head. 'Of course not.'

  Her father smiled. He looked so old, so tired, and so pained. 'I think he's a good man. I think he will look after you. So what do I tell him?'

  She half smiled. 'You like him?'

  He nodded. 'He's good with hounds.'

  She laughed. She supposed her father was right, that certainty was a luxury, no more to be looked for in a betrothal than the fool's gold of romantic ecstasy. Yet could there not be some small magic? A dash, no more? Since Lord Culloden had rescued her there had been only the slow, growing, undramatic certainty of their marriage.

  'Well?' the Earl asked. He seemed anxious.

  She squeezed his hand and smiled. 'Tell him yes, father, tell him yes.'

  He smiled back. 'Thank you. I'll get Scrimgeour to talk to him. Lewis ought to know the will.' He gripped her hand. She could sense the relief in him. He pulled her towards him and kissed her cheek. 'You always were my sensible one.'

  She wished he had not said it, for what lady of sense would hold the memory of a horse-master in her heart? But what was said could not be unsaid, and she could only wait for the proposal and for the future which, this day of lawyers and snow, had begun to look so hard and cold and close.

  Chapter 8

  'Louis was a fool.' The voice was grating, harsh and unforgiving. 'A damned bloody French fool.'

  'Yes, my Lord.'

  'A fat fool! They should have boiled him down for rushlight. He was no God-damned use for anything else!' The man who spoke was an old man of awesome ugliness. He had a small, round head that was perched on an unnaturally long neck. His skin was wrinkled and dark. There was something reptilian about him. He wore a dirty, old-fashioned wig over his baldness. His mouth seemed no more than a lipless slit.

  He sat behind a huge desk, a desk covered with papers and brilliantly lit by ranks of candles. In the centre of the desk, just before his angry, sardonic gaze, was a large book of engraved pictures. It was a rare and inventive volume of pornography that his Lordship was savouring. Lord Paunceley, government servant, was a collector of such things.

  He turned a page that crackled as he handled it. He stared at a picture depicting Leda and the Swan. 'If you were to disguise yourself, Owen, for the purposes of rape, would you adopt the guise of a swan?'

  'No, my Lord.'

  'Do you rape women, Owen, or for that matter boys?'

  'No, my Lord.'

  'You, being Welsh, would doubtless choose something less flamboyant than a swan. Would you be a peewit?'

  'No, my Lord.'

  'A priapic peewit?' His Lordship laughed to himself. 'Better a priapic peewit than to be King of France. It took two drops of the blade, eh?'

  'Indeed so, my Lord.'

  Lord Paunceley relished the information. 'He screamed?'

  'So they say, my Lord.'

  'I wager he screamed! I wager he soaked his royal breeches too.'

  Lord Paunceley smiled at the thought. 'I would heartily like to see their execution machine work, Owen.'

  'I'm sure it could be arranged, my Lord.'

  'On fat George, you think?' Lord Paunceley chuckled evilly. 'Damned Hanoverians! Why we have foreigners for Kings I do not know, and why we choose fat foreigners I cannot think, and why, of all the blubbery mad idiots in the world, we choose farmer George the God-damned bloody Third I have no idea. Doubtless you will report me now, Owen, and have the pleasure of watching my humble neck stretched in the noose?'

  Geraint Owen smiled. He was Lord Paunceley's secretary, Lord Paunceley's memory, Lord Paunceley's admirer, and, to a certain point only, Lord Paunceley's confidant. His Lordship, from his lavish Whitehall office, fought a secret war against Britain's enemies about the globe. He did it, Owen thought, brilliantly, despite an avowed hatred of his King.

  Lord Paunceley leaned back in his chair. He wore a massive fur-lined cloak over his old, thin body a cloak so big that, with his long neck and ugly questing head, it made him look uncannily like an ancient, malicious turtle. A fire roared in the hearth. Curtains and closed windows tried to shut out Whitehall's winter draughts. 'So tell me what that young fool Werlatton was doing in Paris. I didn't send him to Paris. He's a fool. I should have sent him to Wales, that would have been punishment.'

  Geraint Owen refused to take the bait. He was as thin as his master, with a shock of black, unruly hair that fell over his forehead. He gestured with Toby Lazender's letter. 'He went on private business, my Lord.'

  'Private business!' Lord Paunceley spat the words out. 'His only private business is to unhook his breeches and give Lazen an heir. If he's capable of it.'

  Geraint Owen forbore to remark that Lord Werlatton might well have done just that if only Lord Paunceley had not leapt at the chance to employ him. Men whose French was as fluent as their native English were rare in this service, rare and valuable. 'He went to Paris, my Lord, to kill one of the men who killed his bride.'

  Lord Paunceley stared at Owen. On his Lordship's face, wrinkled like old leather, there appeared an expression of mock astonishment. 'God in His insane heaven! He went to kill a man who killed his bride?'

  Owen nodded. The Welshman had a manner of modest diffidence that he had learned as a charity scholar, yet the diffidence, as Paunceley knew, hid a sharp mind. Owen was the only man who could test Lord Paunceley at chess. His Welsh voice was soft and gentle. 'He says, too, my Lord, that the French attempted to apprehend him.'

  'You can't blame them,' Paunceley said reasonably. 'Anyone with hair that red is asking for trouble.'

  'They had no cause, my Lord. We were not at war at the time, and they could not have known of this man Brissot's death. It is his belief, my Lord,' and here Owen shrugged as though he did not fully believe what he had read in Toby's letter, 'that the French have a particular and peculiar interest in his household.'

  Lord Paunceley began to laugh; a croaking, hoarse, terrible sound that grew like the cackling of a strange bird. 'He thinks what?'

  'He says, my Lord, that the death of his bride was particular. She was selected, not at random, but with precision. He cites his own experience in Paris. He claims that the names of his bride's killers were given to him to lure him into captivity.' Owen gestured with the letter. 'It's all here.'

  'His brain's addled.
He must have Welsh blood.'

  'Most of the great families do, my Lord,' Owen observed mildly and with satisfaction. He was rewarded with a thin smile.

  'Go on.'

  Owen put the letter on his Lordship's desk. 'You did yourself warn us that the French, if war came, would be looking for a source of money within this country. Could they be trying to take Lazen's money?'

  'Bah!' Lord Paunceley stared at the Welshman. 'You shouldn't listen to me, I'm an old fool.'

  Geraint Owen pushed the hair off his face. It was sweltering hot in this room. The fire would still be burning, he knew, in August. 'Lord Werlatton begs you to consider his proposals, my Lord.'

  Lord Paunceley picked up Toby's despatch as though it was smeared with the Black Death. 'Begs me! Proposals! No doubt, Mr Owen, he wants his fat Britannic Majesty's resources diverted to his own private end, if he has one?'

  Geraint Owen always knew when he was being dismissed. At that moment he was, for the first and only time, called 'mister'. 'It would not hurt to read his letter, my Lord,' he said as he stood up.

  Lord Paunceley held Toby's despatch over his waste-paper basket. 'Hurt? It will pain me extremely!' He let the letter drop among the other litter. 'Tell him to get on with what I sent him to do. Tell him to forget his fancies! Tell him, with my profoundest respects, that he is a cretinous ape.' He smiled. 'Goodnight to you, Owen.'

  Owen paused, as if he wanted to argue with his master, but he knew it would achieve nothing. He nodded. 'My Lord.'

  Paunceley waited until the door was closed, until he heard the creak of the floorboards that told him Owen was some feet down the corridor, and only then did he lean to his right and pluck Toby Lazender's letter back from the basket.

  He laid it on Leda and the Swan. He read it through once. Then, with apparent effort, he stood and shuffled to the fire. He threw both sheets of the letter onto the coals and watched till the last scrap had been consumed.

  He went back to his desk, moved the precious book and took a clean sheet of paper. He unstoppered his ink, selected a quill, and wrote a letter that would not, quite definitely not, be entrusted to His Britannic Majesty's messengers. The letter concerned itself with the fortunes of Lazen. As his Lordship's quill scratched quickly down the single page his face seemed set in an expression of pure malice. He sanded the letter, folded it, sealed it, then, as the bells of St Margaret's sounded the witching hour, his Lordship sounded the bell that would summon his coach.