A Crowning Mercy 02 Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwall

  'I will, Sarah.'

  The old woman cut the red fungus into shreds. 'Stops the pain, this, you tell Caleb that. Gives dreams, too.'

  'What is it?'

  'Not your business.' She repeated her earlier answer with a frown. 'Your business is your business, girl, but this is mine. If the day comes when all the business of Lazen is in the Castle, then that be the day the Castle must go.' She mixed the red and white scraps and poured them carefully into a white linen bag. She pulled the drawstring tight. 'There. That's for your father with my respect. He's a good man.'

  Campion took the bag. She hesitated, knowing what answer she would receive, but decided that the question, in politeness, had to be asked. 'What do I owe you?'

  'Be off with you! You knows better than that, girl! Go on!'

  She climbed into the chaise and the coachman shook the reins. She smiled at Mistress Sarah. There would have been a time, Campion knew, when a woman like Sarah Tyler would have been burned as a witch, but Lazen had its reasons for protecting such women. The Castle provided the small cottage and, as rent, Mistress Sarah provided the old medicines. Campion looked at the white linen bag and prayed for a miracle.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  She gave the bag to Caleb Wright who pushed it into a pocket. When she asked him what it was, he frowned. 'Why do you think he's been sleeping, my Lady?'

  'Dr Fenner's laudanum?'

  'Fenner! He couldn't put a tired cat to dreaming! I've been giving him Mistress Sarah's physic these last two weeks. Now you go on in. Your father wants you.'

  The Earl said nothing as she entered. He just held out his hand for her to hold.

  She took the hand and sat on the bed.

  He looked worse than she had ever seen him. His skin was white, the lines deep, his mouth pulled down. There was sweat on his forehead where she wiped it with her hand. The room stank.

  Father and daughter stayed in silence. Downstairs, on the gravel forecourt, the loud voices of Lord Culloden's officer friends shouted and laughed.

  He winced. 'Get rid of them.'

  'I will.'

  'Tell them to go to hell.'

  'Father!' She said it soothingly, stroking his forehead. He calmed. His mouth twitched in a brief smile.

  'Fenner's an idiot.'

  'He's tried to help you.'

  'Doctors can't help. They just lie and take their fee.'

  She stroked his head. 'What did he say?'

  The head turned on the pillow with agonizing slowness. 'He told me I'm dying.'

  She smiled, though there was a prickling at her eyes. 'You said doctors lie.'

  'Not this time. Not this time. I told him he wouldn't be paid if he lied to me.' He smiled at his small victory. 'You know I once rode from here to Werlatton in a straight line and I took every damn fence and every damn stream? Now look at me.'

  She said nothing. She stroked his forehead and held his hand.

  His smile was a death's head face. 'I won ten guineas for that. My father said it couldn't be done. No one's done it since.'

  'No one will ever do it again.'

  There was silence again. The voices of the cavalry officers were further away. They were trying to cram themselves into the small boat that was used to clean the lake. From outside her father's rooms came the sound of stiff brushes on the carpet.

  He sighed. 'I suppose Mounter will want to come and mumble over me.'

  'Not if you don't want him.'

  He shrugged. 'Must do the decent thing.' The thought amused him, or perhaps it was the next thing he said that caused the smile to crease the corners of his eyes. 'The Bishop said that heaven is year round grass with stiff fences.'

  She smiled. 'And no plough?'

  'No plough.' He blinked. 'And foxes that run for Goddamned ever.' His face suddenly tightened as he said the last three words. He clenched his teeth and the breath hissed on his lips. He was pale as the sheets. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and looked into her face. 'If I'd kept the dawn start I might not be in this bed.'

  She smiled sadly. Her father had changed Lazen's hunting tradition. Instead of the dawn meet in the mists he had unleashed the hounds at mid-morning when the foxes had digested their night feeding and would run faster. Her father, in just such a fast chase, had fallen at a hedge and his horse had rolled on him. He had never complained. What was planned for the fox was due to the hunter, he would say, and over the years of his paralysis and pain he would always have the master to his room to tell him news of each hunt.

  Her father's hand tightened on hers. 'Which King died in BerkeleyCastle?'

  She smiled at the odd question. 'Edward II.'

  'You're much too clever for a girl. Know how the fellow died?'

  She shook her head. Her father grinned his corpse's grin. 'They put a horn into his arse and then ran a hot poker up it.'

  'They didn't!'

  'They did. Not a mark on him, they say. Straight up! He preferred tupping men, you see, so it was revenge.'

  'Oh.' She smiled. He liked to shock her, but it seemed this story was not for that purpose.

  He closed his eyes to fight the pain. His hand tightened feebly on hers, then relaxed. 'That's what the pain's like, my love. Again and again. Like a red hot poker in a royal arse. God knows why I deserve it.'

  'You don't.'

  'Mounter says it's God's will. I shall have a word with the Almighty about that.'

  She smiled. 'Perhaps the pain will go away, father.'

  He looked at her. 'You never were a fool, so don't start being one now that I'm dying.' He squeezed her hand again. 'Did you see Sarah?'

  'Yes.'

  'How is she?'

  'She hasn't forgiven you for the London doctor.'

  He gave a weak smile. 'She never will. She called me a damned fool in the market place in front of the whole damned town.' He smiled. 'She was right.'

  'What did she give me?'

  'Something to make me sleep.'

  'To make you better?'

  'Better.' His hand tightened again and she saw the rigidity in his jaw, the flicker in his eyes, and she knew that a spasm was racking him. Tears showed at her eyes, tears she was determined not to shed.

  He looked at her. 'Can't stand women who cry.'

  'I know.' It came out as a sob.

  He pulled her with feeble strength so that her head was on his shoulder. He put his thin, weak arm about her and let her weep.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  'Campion,' her father said later. 'Bloody silly name that. I wanted to call you Agatha, but Campion runs in the bloody family. I suppose you'll have to call one of your daughters Campion, poor little bugger.'

  She laughed as she was supposed to laugh. She felt exhausted by crying.

  She had spent the day with her father, watching him sleep fitfully, talking, sometimes laughing. A succession of visitors had come to the room, some welcome, some not, but all curious. Now, as dusk fell beneath a great bank of black cloud in the west, she was alone with him again. He had told the doctor, the rector, even Caleb, to leave them together.

  He turned his head. 'Fenner says this could last for days, God help me.' It was the nearest he had come to complaining. He looked at the four golden seals at her breast. 'You know my father knew the first Countess? He was six when she died.'

  'I know.'

  'They say she had a tongue like a whip.' He smiled. 'She was a great, great lady. That's what you have to be now, my love.'

  It made her cry again.

  He patted her hand. He sighed. He closed his eyes, moaned, and she waited for the spasm to go. He seemed exhausted by it. He rolled his head towards her. 'You're not happy about marrying Culloden, are you?'

  'No.'

  He grimaced, but whether in pain or at her answer, she could not tell. He sighed again. 'Do you remember that alder tree at Werlatton?'

  'Yes.' The tree was in truth two trees. They had begun as saplings side by side and, in a spring storm, the saplings
had been windlashed so that they twined about each other. Campion saw them much later, before the fire that killed her elder brother had burned the tree down. It began as two trunks and then, four feet above the ground, the trunks joined in a writhing, lumpy mass before, glorious above the knotted wood, a single trunk grew smooth and straight.

  Her father smiled. 'Think of marriage like that. You start separate, there's a period of joining which has to be difficult, and then it comes right. It just takes time. Two people don't grow together without problems.'

  'I know.'

  He tried to smile. 'I hope you know. You need a husband.'

  'I do?' She tried to make the question light.

  He nodded. 'If Toby dies, my love, then you'll need a man here to keep Julius in order.'

  'Toby won't die.'

  'He's riding a high horse, my love. I don't blame him. Young men should do that.' He gripped her hand. 'Marry soon, marry quietly if I'm dead, but marry.'

  She nodded.

  He smiled. 'Light the portrait.'

  There were silver holders either side of the painting of her mother and Campion pushed candles into the sockets, took a taper, and lit the eight wicks.

  He stared at his dead Madeleine. 'She was a joy. You're like her.'

  'You're making me cry again.'

  'Do you remember your mother teaching you the minuet at Auxigny?'

  She nodded. It had been on the lawn by the moat, across from the Mad Duke's magical shrine, on a night that was stupendous with stars, and her mother, when Campion was still a tiny girl, had taught her the intricate steps of the minuet and then, joy on her face, had gone into a peasant dance, romping and free, singing the tune aloud and holding her small, laughing, capering daughter by her hand and waist in the moonlight.

  Her father smiled. 'The two of you looked more beautiful than the stars.'

  She looked at him. 'I love you.'

  'I know that, fool.'

  She cried.

  He waited till she was calm. 'Tell Caleb to bring me Sarah's mixture.'

  'Now?'

  'Now.'

  He winced again, and she thought of the red hot poker of pain that slammed up him. She went to the door. A dozen faces looked at her in the ante-chamber. 'Caleb?'

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The Earl said his goodnights to rector, doctor and servants.

  He told her to stay.

  He smiled at her. 'Leave the rents alone; if the cottage is happy then so is the Castle, and always ride the wettest furrow of a ploughed field.'

  She laughed at the hunting adage at the end.

  He held his hand to her, took her within his arm and hugged her close. 'I love you, child.'

  'I know.' Beside the bed Sarah's mixture of white and red made a sediment in a glass of brandy. Her father looked at it and grimaced.

  'Looks like liver fluke.'

  'It will make you sleep.'

  'I know.' He hugged her. 'Remember what I told you. Marry. Don't let the crucifying bastards get their hands on Lazen.'

  'I won't, father.'

  I wish I could have seen you marry.'

  'You will, father.'

  He grimaced. 'Promise me you'll marry?' She kissed him. 'I promise you.' He stared into her eyes. 'I love you, Campion Lazender.'

  'I love you, father.'

  'Don't cry. Don't cry. For sweet Jesus' sake, don't cry.'

  —«»—«»—«»—

  There was thunder in the night, a racking, splintering, crashing storm that brought boughs down in the park and flooded the banks of the lake.

  In the morning there was a sharp west wind. The sky was ragged with driven clouds.

  William Carline, steward of LazenCastle, climbed to the topmost point of the Great House at dawn. He dropped a rope-tied bundle at his feet.

  He rarely came up here. He allowed himself a moment to stare from the high, stone balustraded platform. He looked from the town with its mixture of thatch and red tile to the thick wind-tossed greenness of the eastern woods. To the north was the blackthorn of Sconce Hill and to the west stretched the fertile Lazen valley. The 'Little Kingdom' was damp and shadowed by cloud. The wind lifted his sparse hair, the same wind that flattened the smoke from the Castle smithy eastward.

  He untied the halyard of the flagpole, then stooped, picked up the great, coloured bundle, and pushed the toggle of the bundle into the halyard's loop.

  There was one more toggle and loop to join, and then he ran the bundle to the very top of the pole, pulled on the slack, the slip knot came apart and, like a damp flower opening, the great standard of Lazen fell, unfolded, caught the air, and snapped noisily in the wind. Scarlet, yellow, blue and green, a banner that had flown over this valley for centuries, a banner that had seen the family ennobled, that had been added to as they married other noble families, but which still bore the proud bloodied lance-head of the Lazenders. The banner stretched out in the storm's wake of wind.

  William Carline leaned back, watching the flag for a second, and then, as if the task was a burden, he pulled the halyard once more.

  Unusually, on this morning of wind, a knot of people stood at the Castle entrance. They were townspeople and they too watched the flag.

  They saw the great emblazoned standard spreading its glorious colours against the low, dark clouds, and then it sank to the half and stopped.

  Vavasour George Aretine Lazender, Fifth Earl of Lazen, widower, father and cripple, was dead.

  Chapter 15

  They buried the Earl in the vaulted crypt of the old church. He was carried the short distance from the Castle in a hearse drawn by black-plumed horses.

  The sixth Earl was not present.

  Sir Julius Lazender was not present.

  When it was done Campion stared down into the vault. On her father's velvet draped coffin, bright in the gloom, was his coronet with its eight silver balls.

  Beyond it, shadowed, were the other coffins, their velvet palls faded and matted, their coronets misted by cobwebs. The first Campion was there, the first Countess, the first woman to wear the seals that now hung on Campion's black dress. There, too, was Campion's mother between the new, vivid velvet and the tiny coffin that bore the child whose birth had killed her.

  She stared. Beside her, embarrassed, was Lord Culloden. 'Should we go, my Lady?'

  She ignored him. She stared at the palled coffins. One day, she thought, she would join that company. One day her name would be chiselled stone on this floor, worn over the years to a dull inscription. Hic jacet Lady Campion Culloden.

  Lord Culloden stirred beside her.

  Or perhaps, she thought, she would be buried with the Cullodens, buried in some strange church with her lozenge shield fading on the nave's wall.

  She looked up. The Bishop, the Rural Dean and the Rector watched her across the opened floor. She smiled sadly at the Bishop. 'Thank you, my Lord.' She pulled the veil over her face and turned away from the crypt.

  She walked from the church into the sunlight. She kept her head high. Until her brother returned she was Lazen. She would be a great lady.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The Castle seemed silent after the Earl's death. The visitors went, the great rooms and long corridors were quiet. Flax sheets covered the furniture in the Earl's room. His bedding and mattress were burned. Campion moved the portrait of her mother to the Long Gallery.

  She was busy. A quarter day was due and she had to sign letters and seal them with the Castle's great seal. She had done it often enough for her father, now she did it for the sixth Earl. She heard nothing of Toby.

  She wrote to Lord Paunceley, prevailing on her father's old friendship, and begging his Lordship that Toby should be brought back from France. There was no reply. The news from the Vendee, where Toby helped the rebels, frightened her. She dreaded the post, the London newspapers, the sound of hooves on the gravel that might be a messenger bringing the tidings of another death.

  She heard nothing of Christopher
Skavadale. At night, when Lazen seemed empty, she would remember the kiss, but it seemed now to belong to a distant past, a time when her father was alive, when Lazen had a purpose. The search for love's wonder was drowned in grief, in hard work, just as the black drapes of mourning dulled the Castle's rooms.

  Lord Culloden went to London. He said he would return in a month. Their marriage was postponed.

  The wedding gifts were still piled in the Yellow Drawing Room. The townsfolk had given her a splendid, beautiful picture of the Castle. Campion herself was in the foreground of the picture, driving her phaeton behind high stepping bays at the Castle gate. The painting was meant to hang in the large room of Periton House. Campion no longer rode to see if the plaster dried on the walls.

  She schooled Hirondelle, riding the mare to the lonely chalk hills north of Lazen, galloping under clouded skies of summer, and slowly, as the crops ripened to harvest, she felt her old obsession return. Skavadale, Skavadale. Hirondelle reminded her of Skavadale. As her grief mellowed so the dark, slim, lively face came back to haunt her waking dreams. 'He'll come back to us, Hirondelle.' She would say it on the lonely hilltops, her voice snatched by the summer wind into emptiness.

  Her evenings she spent in the Long Gallery. She played old, half-forgotten tunes on the harpsichord. She would look sometimes at the portraits of the first Countess in her old age and she would see herself as she would look in age, and she wondered if, when she had that grey hair and that straight back, she would reflect on a barren, wasted life. Mrs Hutchinson, Carline, the Reverend Mounter, all thought she was obsessed by melancholy. She was thinner, her lovely face shadowed. Letters were sent to Uncle Achilles. Dr Fenner was called to the Castle, but Campion refused to see him.

  Yet one morning she suddenly seemed brighter. She took breakfast and ordered Wirrell, the estate steward, to come to the Castle. She walked with him to the lake, her voice crisp and her manner energetic, and the Castle was glad that she seemed to have recovered some of her old, happy ebullience.