Court of Foxes

by Christianna Brand

  She was still holding them when at last she climbed the curving stair, her little retinue having gone before her; and entered the exquisite bedroom with its painted and gilded ceiling, its looped satin curtains and four-poster bed all draped with frilled white muslin; still held them while the waiting woman unhooked the billowing white gown, slipped off the satin shoes, white-rosetted, and the infinitely precious silk stockings, and wrapped her in a warm woollen gown. When the woman was gone she moved across the room, almost surreptitiously, poured water into a porphyry vase and arranged the flowers there; and stood for a long time, looking down at them.

  Upstairs in the servants’ quarters of the house, the luxurious appointments gave way to a less extravagant comfort. On the landing, as the waiting woman slowly mounted to her own domain, the pretty maid-servant was busy with flowers, taking to pieces the stiff bouquets and putting the blooms head-high in tall jars of water. She said as the woman approached: ‘Have you not brought the white roses?’

  The woman hauled herself up on weary legs, her hand on the banister. ‘She wants to keep them in her own room.’

  ‘Oh, ho!’ said the girl, laughing. ‘Madam the Marchesa it seems is consolable after all — through a pair of brown eyes.’

  ‘Brown eyes!’ said the woman, grumbling. She moved into a bedroom, leaving the door open, talking through it as she began to divest herself of the handsome black silk gown, emerging at last, bundled into a dressing-robe of red wool. ‘Brown Eyes, forsooth! Some poor second son — for her!’

  The girl laughed again, gesturing to a second room leading off from the landing. ‘Go in and take some rest. Her ladyship’s footmen have hot chocolate brewing and your poor head must ache with the scent of all these flowers in that close little space.’

  It was a big, shabby, comfortable attic room with a tiny fire lit in the grate for the sole purpose (for it was late summer) of heating up a pot of chocolate; furnished with a few well-worn comfortable old armchairs. In two of these, the footmen now lounged, divested of their plush; on the central table the two coachmen perched, side by side, swinging their legs. The woman bustled over to a sideboard and began to lay out cups and saucers and a plate of currant buns. She said over her shoulder: ‘You know your way about this maze of the aristocracy, Sam. Where does the Honourable David Llandovery come?’

  ‘I’ve looked him up. Second son of the late fifth Earl of Tregaron, only brother of the present earl. Great landowners in Wales, mostly in Carmarthenshire; and prodigiously rich. The earl himself was at the play tonight; I saw him in the entrance hall and again about to enter the family coach.’

  ‘David, maybe, but evidently not David and Jonathan,’ said the second coachman. ‘They came separately; and afterwards, outside, when the Hon. David — Brown Eyes, as Bess calls him — went to the carriage after offering the white roses, Lord Tregaron spoke a word to the servants and moved sharply away. Llandovery affected not to notice and drove off by himself.’

  ‘May this not be upon her ladyship’s account?’ said one of the footmen. ‘I observed both of them stare at her with all their eyes.’

  ‘Very possibly. They seem to have been friendly enough up to now, for,’ said the knowledgeable Sam, ‘they were supposed to have been going off together, very shortly, travelling the continent.’

  The woman stood with one elbow on the high mantelshelf, lost in thought, a forgotten cup of chocolate in her hand. ‘Earl of Tregaron! Rich, a great landowner — now that would be something! But as for this nonsense of brown eyes and white roses…’ She shrugged it off with a sort of vicarious hauteur. ‘What after all is a mere honourable to the Marchesa Marigelda d’Astonia—?’

  ‘What indeed?’ said a voice. ‘Whatever it might have been, Mother dear, six months ago in the Cotswold country to plain Miss Marigold Brown.’ And a girl came forward, laughing, and perched herself on footman George’s knee, one casual arm about his neck; and in the flicker of the firelight her hair was the lacquer yellow of the petals of a flower.

  The Marchesa Marigelda d’Astonia Subeggio — Miss Marigold Brown and her unregenerate family from the hamlet of Aston-sub-Edge in the county of Gloucestershire.

  *Llandovery: the liquid double l in Welsh is best pronounced by breathing an h before the l. Hlanduvvery, accent on the ‘duv’.

  For those wishing to trouble with the Welsh pronunciations, there is a glossary at the end of the book.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A SMALL BOY CAME IN, a huge apron of striped ticking tied over his page’s dress. He perched himself in turn on Marigelda’s knee, his light weight supported by two outspread feet. George gave a heave and upset the whole pyramid; sister and brother fell in a heap to the hearthrug and remained there, unperturbed. ‘But sweetheart,’ said Marigelda, ruffling the dark, cropped hair, ‘you should be in bed. Your eyes are starting out of your little head.’

  ‘He has to stay up, to guide your gallants to the window,’ said brother James.

  ‘It’s not necessary, now that we go through the act anyway, on the off-chance.’

  ‘But there are the bribes,’ said George: the elder by a few minutes of the two ‘footmen’, he was custodian of the family money bags.

  ‘None came tonight,’ said the child. ‘But, Gilda, I climbed up myself and looked through the window. The new picture is splendid; and when you stood there and looked up at it, why I nearly burst out blubbering myself, it was so affecting.’

  ‘Yes, the picture is a master-stroke,’ said their mother, complacently. She left her clutter of chocolate cups and came and sat down among them, ousting James from his chair with an amiable shove and pulling her daughter back to lean more restfully against her knees. (‘But be careful of your head, dearest, we must try to do without the hairdresser for the next visit, it comes so expensive.’) ‘As to the picture of your late husband, yes, he’s magnificent. A charming old man, just right. I wonder who he really is?’

  ‘Let’s pray no one discovers. A fine thing,’ said Gilda, giggling, ‘if any of my admirers peeps in one evening and finds me all a-swoon with widowed regrets before one of his own cast-off ancestors! How did your act in the foyer go, Rufus?’

  ‘Very well,’ said the second of the young men, who had (as a second part of his duties that evening) attended as lackey to the coach; sitting swinging his legs on the table next to Sam, his red hair aflame. ‘Sam and I staged a very pretty quarrel, quite a mob collected, James duly appeared with the note and the jewel; and now all the world knows, if for a moment they doubted it, that the Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio is not some adventuress, open to bribery by valuables. Which reminds me — we must return the thing to the jeweller tomorrow, Sam, without fail. Gilda’s written the note.’

  ‘ “The Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio,” ’ declaimed Marigelda, ‘ “returns herewith the jewel sent for her approval and regrets that it is not of the quality she is accustomed to look for.” ’ She added: ‘Where’s Bess?’ and lifted up her voice and called: ‘Hey — Bess! Leave your wretched nosegays, come and join in the evening gossip!’

  Bess came into the candle-lit room, smiling, her hands pink and puckered from long immersion in the cold water; the scent of flowers drifted in with her and was closed out with the closing of the door. Mrs Brown struggled to her feet. ‘Some chocolate, my poor weary darling?’

  ‘Sit quiet, Mother, I’ll get it for myself.’ She in her turn ousted her brother and curled up in the second armchair, her head against his shoulder as he perched on the arm. ‘Forty-three bouquets tonight! And not more than a couple of dozen blooms new for the lot of them!’

  ‘Yes, but by the same token, you must be careful, Bess. I carried the Marquis’s flowers and I swear I recognised that same misshapen violet that’s been running through the reconstituted bunches for a fortnight. The Marquis is a man accustomed to sending flowers to women. He observes such details. You must assess your customers, my pet.’

  ‘I mixed up two lots,’ said Bess. ‘I intended that bouquet for little Cru
m — he’s as blind as a bat and anyway owes for the last three. And anyway, I don’t believe the Marquis was in the house himself tonight, at all. His footman bought the flowers at the stall.’

  ‘And brought them to the box,’ said James.

  ‘They’ve taken to doing that,’ said George. He frowned. ‘The wagers on the bouquets are becoming a little too important in themselves. We started the whole thing — Sam sending the marigolds and boasting afterwards about her carrying them — to draw attention to Gilda. It’s worked out splendidly, ending in this avalanche of flowers, Bess opening the stall and all the rest of it — and most profitable it is, Bess; I say nothing against that. But we don’t want the thing getting out of proportion, the whole interest shifting to the wagers, the bucks simply placing their bets in their clubs, some perhaps never even having set eyes on her; and sending their servants to the playhouse to do the rest. The important thing is that Gilda gains a selection of admirers to choose from when at last we decide on one.’

  ‘And talking about that, Gilda, there’s more news of you tonight. You wear always a white dress—’

  ‘Having no other,’ said Gilda.

  ‘—and wear no jewels—’

  ‘Having none either,’ said Sam; and quoted, ‘But being in no need of adornment.’

  ‘—though you are reported to have an Aladdin’s Cave of them.’

  ‘Reported by me,’ said little Jake. ‘I told the man that, the first that came and peeped through the window.’

  ‘Did you, indeed, little brother? Then you excelled yourself.’

  ‘Well, and next time I excel myself, George, shall I not at least be allowed to keep my bribe?’

  ‘No, you shall not, my pocket Shylock. Every penny we get we need, to finance this adventure; our uncle’s legacy is fast running out. And any complaints,’ said George, raising a silencing hand, ‘and it’s back with you to the dame school in Chipping Camden, where you ought to be anyway.’

  ‘Yes, well, Master George, and it’s back to the Cotswolds with you as well,’ said his mother, ‘if just once more you give Gilda the giggles as she makes her appearance. What on earth were you up to?’ Her sweet round face was contorted with mirth at the memory of it. ‘I thought she would explode; and you know how I catch the infection, there we were, perched in the box in the sight of all, with faces forced to sweet tranquillity yet quivering like two jellies.’

  ‘It was mother’s curtsey,’ said Gilda. ‘She comes backing away from the door after someone leaves a bouquet, bobbing and bouncing — if you could see yourself, Mother dearest — nid-nod, nid-nod, and with your posterior pushed out till it nearly fills the room and knocks over the flowers. George and I had to stuff our hands into our mouths when the old Duke came, to prevent his hearing us in the corridor outside… “Yes, my lord, no, my lord, I will see that my lady receives the flowers, my lord…” ’ She scrambled to her feet and bowed her way backwards across the room in a wild caricature of the waiting woman’s servility, head bobbing, bottom out-thrust, an imaginary bunch of flowers clutched to her bosom, ‘Yes, my lord, no, my lord, compliments and thanks, my lord…’ and collapsed at last, spent with laughter, in a heap at her mother’s feet.

  Could Brown Eyes, could Bright Eyes, but have seen their lovely Lady of Melancholy now!

  It was midnight. Above the chimney pots outside their snug-drawn curtains, the moon dreamed softly over London; in the cobbled street below, the feet of a watchman stumped in rhythm with the tap of his stick, horse hooves clip-cloppetted past with a rattle and ring of following wheels, gay voices cried out goodnights. Within, the family laughed and yawned and stretched and said they must get to bed, and yet lingered, gossiping in the candlelight, the little boy half asleep with his head in his sister’s lap. ‘And now, Gilda dearest, the white roses — you will let me have them again for tomorrow night?’

  ‘Oh, Bess, out of all I get — surely I may keep a few pitiful roses?’

  ‘But you’ll have them, love — won’t you? I only want the loan of them to sell to him over again. I promise you,’ said Bess, ‘none but Brown Eyes shall buy them for you!’ Mrs Brown looked over at her warningly but she did not catch the glance and Marigelda was gazing with careful indifference into the fire. ‘He came rushing out of the theatre — I was just closing down the stall — crying out, “White roses, I must have white roses!” as though there were a conflagration under way, that nothing but a shower of white roses would extinguish—’

  ‘Let us hope they may not rather start a conflagration,’ said George, looking somewhat anxiously down at his sister’s face. She had fallen into an abstraction and he stirred her, none too gently, with a brotherly toe. ‘Come, sweetheart, wake up! We come to a serious matter; this is no time for falling asleep — any more than for falling in love.’

  ‘Love doesn’t enter into this adventure; anyway, not on our side,’ said Rufus; but he too looked troubled. He remembered the unobtrusive tact with which ‘Dear Dai of Carmarthen’ had intervened that evening to break up the supposed quarrel between himself and his brother; and thought that few women if put to the test would be proof against the integrity, the barely perceptible strength and purpose beneath the quiet charm. But — a mere minnow of a second son among so many available far greater fish! — and rumoured to be going abroad, anyway, and furthermore, Sam had learned that evening, to have his heart already engaged elsewhere. ‘Lord Tregaron was in the house tonight,’ he said on a more positive note; and prayed that no one would blurt out the relationship. ‘We are wondering whether he may not be the one we are looking for. Very rich, Gilda my love, young, handsome, well-born — you should see the size of the arms on the family equippage!’

  ‘I daresay I shouldn’t spend much time in the family equippage,’ said Gilda. She added: ‘And in only one pair of the family arms.’ The pun restored to her much of her customary easy sweet humour and to oblige them she shelved for the moment the memory of the white roses. ‘Who is this Tregaron?’

  ‘An earl, my pet; and the largest landowner in Wales.’

  ‘Too wet,’ said Gilda, shrugging off Wales and Tregaron.

  ‘What’s that to you? You don’t suppose, little idiot, that he’ll set you up in a bijou residence in Carmarthen? A condition of course will be that you reside in Mayfair.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘Affianced, to an Honourable Miss Harrington; I forget her other name. But what of it? — the marriages are arranged, in these great families and it hasn’t prevented his looking very lovingly indeed upon another lady.’ She made a doubtful moue and he hastened on with distracting details. ‘A charming fellow, Gilda, it seems; a man of fashion of course and a wit but at the same time serious, well read, much travelled. His father died while he was in his minority; the mother, however, is still living and there is a sister.’

  ‘You’re a mine of information,’ said James. ‘How do you know all this? Before this evening we’d never even considered him. He hadn’t been in town.’

  ‘By the simple expedient of enquiring. That’s the best of being some poor hick from the country, as I heard myself called tonight: one may confess ignorance in matters that the real gentleman of the ton would automatically know.’

  ‘Yes, but by the same token, you were unwise, Rufus, in the quarrel scene, to mention Gloucestershire. I’d already given myself out as coming from the Cotswolds.’

  ‘I was taken unaware and Gloucestershire was all I knew.’

  ‘And he then nearly blurted out his true name!’ said Sam.

  ‘But changed the word Brown at the last moment to B-Bredon — and was obliged to pretend an impediment in the speech for the rest of the evening.’ He went off into chuckles of the ever-ready family laughter.

  ‘Ight or ong, it was the only thing I could do,’ said Rufus.

  ‘Good heavens, I’d forgotten!’ cried Gilda. A famous cocotte had recently started into fashion a delicious difficulty with initial ‘r’s’; she began to recite her lesson in a dron
ing recitative. ‘Eally your Oyal Highness, I must eserve the ight to efuse, eally your Oyal Highness, I must eserve the ight to efuse…’

  ‘So we must all remember for the future, Rufus,’ said George, ‘when you’re being gentleman as opposed to third footman, that your name is Bredon and that you stutter.’

  (‘I eget I must epel Lord Ichard’s equest, I eget I must epel Lord Ichard’s equest…’)

  ‘It shows the importance of rehearsing every detail in advance,’ said James. ‘We can’t afford to make mistakes. Time’s short. When the London season closes we shall no longer have a — a display case for Gilda; and not even Bessie’s flower-stall to bring in a little extra.’

  ‘And we are not eally ich,’ said Bess, out-chanting Gilda.

  ‘No indeed; all this hire of house, furniture, dress, uniforms, the carriage, has been heavier than we dreamed. We said we’d put our all into this adventure, and already we’ve very nearly done so.’

  ‘What we’ve sown we shall reap,’ said Sam, reassuringly, ‘when Gilda is placed to advantage.’

  ‘To your advantage you mean,’ said Gilda, without rancour.

  ‘To the advantage of all. You are the sacrificial goat, my pretty sister, but the rest of us have invested all we had to offer, on your chances — each his share of the old man’s unexpected legacy, each his work, his hopes, his prospects—’