A Crowning Mercy 02 Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwall

  'Ah! Get on with you! I remember you in swaddling, my Lady, and you were a picture then!'

  She laughed. She went from her father's room, back to the ball and its glory, back to the excitement which a shadowed horseman had brought so suddenly to this night.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  She sipped champagne, she danced. The Bishop insisted on a minuet, raising his feet as though he was a carthorse and clumping them down in a travesty of the dance's minute, precise, calculated movements. He boomed at her how he had spent the morning helping his groom to blister the hocks of his hunters. Campion smiled, made polite answers, and searched the crowds who lined the room's edges. She knew the Gypsy would not come into this splendour, but she looked.

  She danced with a gloomy French count, one of the exiles who kept bitter court at her grandmother's house, who frowned at the other dancers and spoke hardly a word to her until he bowed elegantly at the music's end. 'You are to be married, my Lady?'

  'Indeed, my Lord.'

  'If you are bored, madame,' and he twitched the lace cuff of his threadbare sleeve, 'I am always at your service. I am, of course, discreet.'

  She stared in astonishment as he walked away. Her uncle laughed at her as he took her to the pillared drawing room for champagne beneath the great Vecchio ceiling. 'He propositioned you?'

  'I think he did, uncle.'

  'That's how he makes his living.'

  'But he's so gloomy! And ugly!'

  Achilles laughed again. 'I am told by my lady friends, dear niece, that he is exquisitely skilled.' He raised his eyebrows at her and presented her with champagne.

  She leaned with him at the doors which opened onto the WaterGarden. The gravel paths which led to the small stone bridges above the shallow, carp filled canals were busy with couples who walked, stood, talked, and kissed. Ropes had been strung from the castle to tall poles at the western edge of the garden from which hung paper Chinese lanterns.

  'Exquisitely skilled'. Her uncle's words intrigued her. She felt nothing when Lord Culloden kissed her, nothing except distaste at his moustache. She wondered what the skill would be that Achilles described, but dared not ask. She felt oddly childish. Perhaps marriage, and the duty of marriage, would initiate her into this world she did not understand, this world that she could glimpse only by half understood gesture and elegant innuendo. There was a secret, and she did not share it, and she felt that these people, even her uncle, laughed at her innocence. Then she remembered the single Christmas touch of the Gypsy and thought there was a clue in that memory to what her uncle spoke of.

  She looked for the Gypsy in the WaterGarden and she could not see him. She told herself that Caleb had been right. She had seen only a ghost in the shadows at the edge of her happiness. She had seen a horseman, no more, and she had decided that the horseman must be he. She had been wrong.

  Achilles smiled at her. 'You look forlorn, dear Campion.'

  She laughed. 'I have to sit with your mother.'

  'Then let me not keep you from the awesome presence.'

  She dutifully found her grandmother who held stately court on a small dais at one side of the ballroom. The dowager Duchess d'Auxigny felt the coloured Peking dress with an ancient finger and thumb, sniffed, and supposed that it had been 'cobbled in London'?

  'Indeed, Grandmere.'

  Her grandmother was resplendent in black silk, mourning her son who had been guillotined in Paris. The Duchess had hated her son in life, but now his death had made her a small celebrity among the émigré community. She felt qualified now to pass absolute judgment on the revolution in France, a judgment that none was allowed to question. Her liveried servant, a black band about his yellow-sleeved arm, stood a precise two feet to her left and held a bowl of prunes. The Duchess ate them slowly, leaning over to spit the stones into a silver dish held by Madame la Retiffe, her paid companion. She pointed a finger at Achilles who danced with the Marchioness of Benfleet's small daughter. 'Achilles grows more stupid every day.'

  Madame la Retiffe, holding her silver dish, hissed an echo. 'Stupid!'

  Campion could not understand how anybody could think Uncle Achilles was stupid. 'I think it's nice of him. He always dances with the ladies who feel left out.'

  Her grandmother ignored the compliment. 'It is ridiculous to think of him as Duc d'Auxigny! Like an ermine wrap on a monkey!'

  'Monkey!' hissed la Retiffe.

  'I think he looks very distinguished,' Campion protested.

  'Distinguished! Distinguished! His father was distinguished, child, not that grinning monkey. I should have drowned him at birth!' Achilles's father had been the Mad Duke, the man who thought he was God, the man who made simple, child-like miracles to happen with clumsy, expensive machines. The Duchess spat another prune stone out of her mouth, ejecting it in a small spray of yellowed spittle. 'Distinguished! Now that is what I call a distinguished man!' She smiled, caking the thick powder in her wrinkled face. 'He must be a Frenchman!'

  It was not a ghost, not a desire seen in the shadows.

  The Gypsy had come.

  The Duchess had spotted him across the room and now she simpered at the tall, handsome man who stood carelessly at the edge of the dance floor.

  The Duchess was not the only woman to notice him. He was not dressed as a servant this night, but as a gentleman. His clothes were black, except for a lilac coloured shirt and silk stock. His suit was elegantly cut, his hair drawn back, and his left ear was bare of the gold ring.

  He was tall, slim, and he wore a full length sword instead of the small dress-swords of the other men. The women watched him over their fans. He was the handsomest man in the room and his air of arrogant self-sufficiency intrigued them.

  'Who is he?' the Duchess asked.

  Campion was tempted to tell her that the distinguished man she so much admired was a servant. She shrugged instead. 'I don't know.'

  'Madame!' The Duchess turned to her sour, pale, thin companion. 'I wish to meet him. Go.'

  Madame la Retiffe put down her dish of damp stones, stepped from the low platform, and walked obediently across the floor.

  The Gypsy, as the woman approached, looked past her at Campion. It seemed, at that moment, as if there were just the two of them in the crowded room, as if those odd, pale blue eyes were reading her very soul. He gave her a flicker of a smile and a hint of a bow.

  'He's seen me!' the Duchess said.

  William Carline, Lazen's steward, who moved magnificently among the guests to check that the servants were doing their duties, saw and recognized the Gypsy. He frowned. He looked at Campion, edged an offended head towards the man he knew to be a servant, and raised an eyebrow that asked whether Campion wished the man to be ejected from among his betters. She gave a tiny shake of her head. Carline, his sense of propriety wounded, stalked towards the hallway.

  Uncle Achilles, pausing in the dance, saw the tiny shake of Campion's head. He sighed. He smiled at the ten year old child he gallantly danced with. 'Do you know what happens when you put a black cat in the dovecote?'

  'No, sir.'

  'Blood and feathers and lots of trouble!' He laughed. 'I do like nonsense, my dear, I do so like nonsense!'

  Madame la Retiffe led her prize across the floor. The heads of the women turned. Some of the servants looked astonished.

  The Gypsy stopped in front of the Duchess. He gave her a bow that would have pleased Louis XIV. The old woman simpered and tapped Madame la Retiffe's chair with her folded black fan. 'You may sit beside me, monsieur.' She looked at Madame la Retiffe. 'Introduce me, then!'

  It seemed Madame la Retiffe had not discovered the name of the intriguing, tall man who had caused such a stir by his presence.

  The Duchess looked at him. 'Well, who are you?'

  He looked at Campion, and the meeting of their eyes seemed to hold the breath in her body. He smiled, changing his face utterly. 'The Lady Campion knows who I am.'

  The old face glowered at Campion. 'You said you didn'
t know!'

  'I don't know his name, Grandmere.' That was not quite true. She knew him as Gitan, but that seemed more of a nickname than a name. She smiled, enjoying the moment. 'I just know that he's my brother's groom, Grandmere.'

  She could not resist saying it, not to humiliate the Gypsy, but to see the horror on her grandmother's face when it dawned on her that she had invited a servant to sit beside her. Campion stood, ignoring the gaping, shocked mouth of her grandmother, and stepped down from the small dais. She made her face cold, her manner stiff, and she reflected that this man deserved humiliation for coming among his betters. 'What are you doing here?'

  'I come from your brother.' His voice was lazy and confident.

  'You have a message?' She addressed him in a voice of aristocratic command, yet his face, so full of life and promise, stirred something deep inside.

  He smiled. 'No.' He had turned his body subtly and forced Campion to take a further step away from her grandmother so that, to the room as a whole, it seemed that the tall, black haired stranger was deep in private talk with the golden haired bride. 'I have brought you his wedding gift.'

  It was insufferable, yet he managed to imply that his coming with the gift was the most important part of this evening. He smiled again, and she felt her defences breaking down. His arrogance, his charm, and the confidence on his slim, dark face, astounded her. She straightened her back. 'The steward will receive it.'

  'I doubt it if he can!' He sounded amused. 'I thought I might give it to you at the temple in the park.'

  'My dear?' The voice, cold and lazy, came from behind her. She turned. Lewis Culloden, seeing her with the handsome stranger, had come to find out who he was. He frowned at the Gypsy with dislike, as though sensing that the man was a rival. 'I don't think I have the honour, sir?'

  Lord Culloden had forgotten seeing this man at Christmas, and in truth there was no reason to connect the servant who had disarmed the boy in the Hall with the gentleman who now stood at Campion's side.

  She had discomforted her grandmother by revealing that the man, despite his clothes, was a servant. Yet now, with Lord Culloden beside her, she found she could not repeat the assertion. She did not want to see the Gypsy humiliated by Lord Culloden, who, she was sure, would indignantly demand that the man return to the servants' hall. That decision was hers, not his. She heard herself tell the lie and she was astonished at herself and she felt the delicious amusement of it even as she spoke. 'This is the Prince de Gitan, my Lord.'

  Culloden looked startled. Princes were as common in French aristocracy as earls among the British, but Lord Culloden did not like to be outranked by the tall stranger. He bowed coldly.

  The Gypsy had smiled as she invented the rank. He spoke to Culloden in French, complimenting him on his bride, and the discovery that the Prince de Gitan spoke no English seemed to irritate his Lordship even more. He put a proprietorial hand on Campion's arm. 'I think I am named for the next polonaise, my dear.'

  'Of course.' She smiled at him, then turned back to the Gypsy and spoke in French. 'The temple?' She thought, as she said the two words, that she had entered a conspiracy of shame, a conspiracy she could not resist. The Gypsy bowed. 'The temple, my Lady.' Culloden pulled at her arm. 'My dear?' She let herself be led to the dance. In a few moments, she knew, she would leave this ball. She would leave a celebration arranged for her marriage and go into the darkness to meet the man who had given her dreams, had haunted those dreams, and who had come again to Lazen to tempt her with the unthinkable. She would go to the temple.

  Chapter 13

  The polonaise finished. She curtseyed. She smiled weakly at Lord Culloden. 'I'm feeling distinctly faint, my Lord.'

  'Faint?' He frowned.

  'The champagne, perhaps?' She touched her forehead. Faintness was so common an excuse, so expected of a woman, that he would think nothing of it. Yet, for all its ordinariness, it was an excuse she had never, ever used in her life. Now, as he put a hand on her shoulder, she felt a horrid premonition that the excuse would run like a threnody of unhappiness through her marriage. 'I'm going to lie down for a few moments. I'll come back.'

  He bowed. 'You will be missed, my dear.'

  She climbed the stairs, crossed the windowed bridge, and went to her rooms like a guilty person. She could feel her heart beating. It seemed like a crime, like a delicious, secret crime.

  Her maid was not in the rooms. Campion locked all the doors. She lit new candles from the guttering stubs of the old, took the ostrich plumes from her hair, sat at the mirror and put new powder on her face. She put shadow-cream on her eyelids. She took the dance card from her wrist, looked wryly at the names of the men whom she was disappointing, then dropped it on her dressing table. She smiled a conspiratorial smile at her own reflection.

  From the wardrobe she took a long, hooded cloak of midnight blue. She listened to make certain no one was in the corridor, then, her every sense heightened by excitement, she turned the key and slipped into the tangle of Tudor rooms at the back of the Old House.

  She went down servants' stairs, past the silver vaults, through the old laundry, and out into the kitchen garden. She pulled the cloak's hood over her hair of pale, pale gold.

  The night air was fresh and warm. She could smell the herbs. The music came to her across the dark lawns that lay to the north of LazenCastle. The gate of the garden creaked as she opened it.

  She walked on the grass, her satin slippers thin enough to impress every small bump on the soles of her feet. The orchard blossoms made a haze of whiteness to her right.

  She skirted the mound that had once held the keep when Lazen was a real castle. At its foot, where she hugged the dark hillock, were the Castle's beehives.

  She stopped at the edge of the mound and saw the lights brilliant in the castle's northern windows. Couples walked in the gardens, couples whose laughter came soft over the grass.

  She walked on. There was an exhilarating, nervous pleasure in this secrecy, this assignation on such a night as this. She wanted to laugh aloud, she wanted to kick off her slippers and run barefoot on the grass. How many brides left their betrothal ball to meet another man? The thought made her laugh.

  To her right was Sconce Hill, a tangle of bushes and darkness, and ahead were the ruins of the old gatehouse. Once LazenCastle had faced north. Now, when it was no longer a place of war, but one of the great mansions of England, it had turned its face to the warmer south.

  She could see the bright couples walking beneath the paper lanterns in the WaterGarden. She could not go that way. Like the guilty person she felt herself to be, she must stay in the darkness. She went to her right, crossing the northern approach road, and going into the long, tangling grass beyond.

  Laughter bubbled inside her. Practical, sensible Campion was doing what no one would believe she could do. She could scarcely believe it herself.

  She had to pull the coloured Peking above her knees to climb the barred fence that divided the grassland from the park. She climbed carefully, not wanting to tear her satin stockings, and then, unsnagged, she jumped safely to the far side.

  She went more slowly now. The park was rough pastureland, its dips and bumps scarcely lit by the moon or the brilliant light that came from the Castle. She lifted the skirts of her dress and cloak above the long grass and searched ahead for a sight of the small temple on its low rise.

  She heard muffled laughter to her left. She stopped, crouched and listened. She could hear voices, a man's and a woman's, and then she heard a long moan, a laugh, and she knew suddenly that a couple had gone to the shadowed secrecy at the bottom of the ha-ha. The ha-ha was a ditch that separated the formal gardens from the park, a ditch with one sheer face that no deer could climb, thus keeping the view from the Castle unimpeded by a fence and the gardens unravaged by deer. And Campion, listening to the sound, felt as though she was a part of the happiness of illicit love that was spreading about Lazen this night. A pang of excitement and apprehension shot through her as sh
e rose and walked on. She was being foolish, she knew it, and it was delightful, delirious foolishness.

  She justified the foolishness by telling herself that she came only to receive Toby's present. She tried to persuade herself that she did nothing that would offend Uncle Achilles' concern for her dignity. She would take the present, whatever it was, thank him graciously, and walk away.

  She saw the moon whiteness of the footpath, turned onto it, and there, faintly pale against the beeches behind, was the elegant temple. Her grandfather had built it, a small pillared fancy that stood on a stepped pedestal and was crowned by a white, domed roof. She had sometimes climbed the steps and chased about the floor with Toby when she was a child. Her father had spoken of pulling it down, yet it still stood, deserted and odd, the retreat where the fourth Earl of Lazen had written his huge, unpublished attack on the Copernican system.

  She walked to the bottom of the steps. The Solomonic pillars twisted to the white dome. A wall, low enough to sit on, edged the temple's floor. She looked up. She wondered if she should call his name. She wondered if she should turn back to the Castle.

  She could hear the music of the dance, so faint now as to be like the music of the fairies that her mother would tell her to listen for in the night-time woods behind the Castle.

  'Hello?' Her voice seemed small and shy.

  Silence, but for the trees moving in the wind.

  She felt sudden fear. She was alone in the darkness to meet a man she did not know, a servant. She told herself that she should go back to the Castle, that she should abandon this foolishness.

  'Hello?'

  Two bats skittered through the temple's pillars, twisting and darting into the darkness.

  She turned. A shadow moved in the park, a swift, dark shadow against the blackness of Two Gallows Hill. She heard the hooves on the turf, the jingle of curb chains, and she knew he had come and she felt something close to panic in her, a panic edged with excitement. She stood unmoving as the shadow resolved into a black horse, a black-cloaked rider on its back.

  The Gypsy stopped five yards from her. The black cloak was draped on his horse's rump. He leaned on the pommel of his saddle. The moonlight made his light eyes bright in his dark face. 'My Lady.'