Court of Foxes

by Christianna Brand

  David made a gesture for silence, almost frightening in its chill command. He spoke quietly and calmly, but Gilda saw that his hand was shaking, and she looked up into his face and saw there, suddenly, a dark and terrible rage. Gone was the gentle look, the sweetness, the tender smilingness; his jaw was set, his mouth rigid, his whole fair face now dark with anger. So had she seen Gareth y Cadno look, who had the same blood in him. But where the Fox would have sworn, laid about him with flashing eyes and words of black fury, David said with a cold control: ‘Have a care, Madam! You are speaking of the woman I love.’

  ‘Love?’ cried the Countess; and ‘Love?’ cried poor Anne, struggling up off her knees. ‘You can’t love her, David! What about Blanche?’

  ‘What about her?’ he said, turning swiftly, fear in his eyes. ‘Our betrothal is ended.’ And he swung round upon Gilda. ‘You told me—’

  She faltered: ‘The ring. She hadn’t taken with her to London her betrothal ring. She’d left it—’

  ‘She had left it with me, lest it fall into the hands of such creatures as you have consorted with,’ said the Countess. And suddenly she stiffened, her face grew grey with something almost like terror. ‘How do you know? How do you know that Blanche didn’t take her ring?’ And she swung round upon David. ‘She was robbed of all the rest by that murdering villain, riding alone. And by a woman…’ Again the look of fear came into her eyes. ‘David — for God’s sake — you say you love this woman—’

  For once she could speak the truth. ‘Do you suggest it was I?’ cried Gilda, high in indignation. ‘I have explained it all to you a hundred times, how I was held to ransom, how in trying to escape I came to the scene of the hold-up of the coach; how for your son’s sake I went back with him to the Court. How could I be working with these people? David knows—’

  But David was not listening. He said heavily: ‘Then it was a mistake? My engagement with Blanche still stands?’

  ‘And you are bound to her in honour,’ said the old woman. ‘In honour.’ She gathered up her skirts in her two fat hands and motioned with her head for her daughter to follow her and so waddled, with her own odd and oddly touching dignity, to the door. There she turned. ‘You are Earl of Tregaron now, David, head of a great family with all the imperative duties that position must bring. And betrothed to a virtuous woman of noble birth. What you will do about this — embarrassment—’ she waved a pudgy hand towards Gilda — ‘is a man’s problem which I leave to you to resolve. My advice is to take your farewells of her immediately and let her go.’ And she came forward a little into the room and said, for a moment almost appealingly: ‘You are your brother’s heir, David. Ask yourself what he would have done.’

  ‘And your father’s heir,’ said Gilda. ‘Ask yourself what he would have done.’ And she laughed out loud and curtseyed deeply to the two backs, one squat, one tall and ungainly, that hurried off, scandalised, resentful, down the corridor away from them. ‘You are not free, David,’ she said, ‘and neither am I. But don’t you see that it’s just that, that gives us our liberty?’ And her mind swam and her eyes grew dim and she fell in a dead faint into his outstretched arms.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AND SO MARIGELDA CAME back to the Bijou, turfed the housekeeper out of the frilly white bedroom — which, in her absence, Mrs Brown had thought it only reasonable to appropriate to herself — and settled down at last to a life of un-wedded bliss. The dreaded explanations had after all proved easy. The Earl of Trove, delicately approached, had proved adamant in keeping Lord Tregaron to his bargain — and he was so enraptured at finding that after all he might eat his cake and keep it, that he was only too happy to accept any account his poor innocent angel might give him, of her unfortunate espousals: (she told him all about the struggle she had had, finding herself deceived and betrayed, to keep the marriage one in name only.) The ravening wolves also were a little, though only a little, explained; he was delighted — seeing in their intransigence, an opportunity to provide for her entirely, as though she were indeed his wife. All that money could buy — since his name, alas! might be neither offered nor accepted — could at least be lavished upon her. She clung to her house; but some more furniture and redecoration upstairs would be charming; a whole trousseau replaced the white dress and widow’s weeds; now rifled coachloads of jewels could not have outshone her own. Her housekeeper and the page most fortunately were still available. A little gilded phaeton for afternoon drives round the park, wrapped in luxurious furs, completed the fulfilment of her dreams; a box at the playhouse was not among them, her enthusiasm for the drama having unaccountably waned.

  November, December. Upstairs in the once shabby ‘housekeeper’s room’ they gathered as so often they had before; so long ago as it seemed, though it was but half a year since first they had come there. She perched on George’s knee, as of old, in the close, happy, family way, Mrs Brown making chocolate, little Jake handing round the cups; he had been sent running to summon her brothers, now established, with the secret help of her inexhaustible pin-money, in various positions of their own choosing. ‘How delicious it is to be here! I used to think of it so often, down at the Cwrt, and long for it — to see you all and talk and laugh and just be together again.’

  ‘To have been through so much,’ said Mrs Brown, fondly, ‘and come out of it all unmarked!’

  ‘Unmarked! Don’t believe it! — you should see the great scar on my backside—’

  ‘—and with her language so refined,’ said Rufus.

  ‘If you’d heard the language I have!’ And for a moment she was back with them, riding the road, cursing with the best of them, half in English, half in incomprehensible Welsh. ‘It was fun! Sometimes it was frightening, much of the time I was worried, anxious about David; but — even when I was scared out of my wits there was something exciting about it, something thrilling. And when you’d succeeded and were riding back with your pockets full of treasure…!’

  ‘Tell again about the Black Toby, Gilda, how you took the farmer’s money from him at pistol point—!’

  ‘Now, Jakey, you think too much of all this adventure. It was necessary; but only for a little while. I wouldn’t have you mixed up in it for all the gold in England.’ She obliged all the same with a suitably edited version. ‘There he stood: I could see his blue eyes glittering through his mask…’ But not a word, never a word of all this to David! she adjured them for the hundredth time.

  ‘He really believes you sat there mum all that time and came away unscathed?’

  ‘Unscathed — so I did. Not mum, perhaps; but none dared lay a finger on me. I was the Vixen.’

  The Vixen: a creature of the wilds, slinking along the moonlit roads after its prey, predatory, ruthless; fighting and scratching among its own sex, tumbled in its lair and out, by such males as sought it and not always of its own will… And yet — she had struggled, had conquered: a woman, alone, she had used her wit and her courage to subdue at last a gang of men, lawless and dangerous, ugly and violent; and to trick them in the end. ‘You seem almost proud of it,’ said Bess, watching the great eyes kindle in the lovely young, soft, sweet face; and, ‘I am proud of it in a way,’ she had to admit. And after all, it had all been for David.

  ‘You and your David! Do you remember, Gilda, how you said you should spend more time in the family arms than in the family carriage? You’ve made that one good, at least. Three Earls of Tregaron: one false, and you married him, one true and you buried him, one new and you—’

  ‘Love him,’ said Gilda.

  ‘Yet you’re complacent as to this marriage of his…’ Lord Tregaron had been called down to Wales for discussions on his forthcoming wedding.

  ‘I’ve told you a thousand times, Mother — he is head of the family, he must marry. And better after all this Blanche whom he hates already-or at any rate resents, upon my account — than someone else whom he might like a little.’

  ‘I still think you should make some effort to divorce this husband of yours;
deception, coercion, whatever grounds you choose to bring forward…’

  ‘I expect he’ll soon die,’ said Jake, ‘and then you’ll be free anyhow. He told me himself that a highwayman’s life is a short one. Isaac Darkin died when he was twenty, did you know that? And McClaine at twenty-six and he’s most famous of all. He said he’d already overstayed his time — the Fox said so, I mean. I hope he doesn’t die,’ he added, ‘because I liked him very much; and I hope you don’t divorce him, Gilda, because fancy me being brother-in-law to such a great highwayman as he is! But I daresay he will and then if you’ve put off his lordship from marrying this Blanche, you can marry him yourself.’

  ‘I don’t want to marry him,’ said Gilda. ‘You haven’t seen that old woman!’

  ‘You’d be mistress then,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘and might bring her to heel.’

  ‘I’d rather be mistress in the other sense and have no truck with her at all. You don’t know these great establishments — I couldn’t live in them. Conducted from room to room as though you didn’t know your way about, every mouthful watched lest, I suppose, you grow weary of chewing and need someone to do it for you. And the beds! — four great posts as high as two floors of this house, with feathers at the top as though you lay in a catafalque…’

  ‘If Tregaron should leave you, Gilda, and without provision…’

  ‘There are other men in the sea,’ said her mother.

  ‘Not for me. But he’ll never leave me,’ said Gilda. ‘And besides…’ She did not say what ‘besides’ and only when David came back, with her white arms about his neck and her silky gold head against his heart, told him that she thought — she was almost sure now — that she was going to have a baby.

  He was beside himself with joy; would have sent for half the physicians in town to certify to the fact and stand guard over his burgeoning darling… ‘Dearest, nonsense! My M — my housekeeper sent for a doctor and he simply laughed at me for being so eager and told me to send for him again when I had more reason. And so I shall — for him. I want none of your great family physicians running back with tales to your mother. But tell me you’re happy!’

  He was happy; but it redoubled his wretchedness about his approaching marriage. ‘This child will be my heir; my real heir.’

  ‘Perhaps it’ll be a girl,’ said Gilda comfortably.

  ‘But if it’s a boy—’

  ‘Then it’ll be no worse off than Gareth y Cadno; who, no one denies, was in fact your father’s eldest son.’

  ‘My father could do nothing to acknowledge it; and neither shall I be able to. If only Blanche’s father—’

  ‘Whatever the Earl of Trove does, I’m still married to the Fox.’ She put her arms about his neck again. ‘I’m happy as I am, dearest, I wish nothing different. Our child shall be just our child; I don’t ask a great name and position for any babe of mine. Let Blanche’s children grab all that, and for my part welcome.’

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ he said, rather miserably. ‘Her father insists; my mother has told him the whole story and they two agree that, for everyone’s sake, the marriage must go forward. And having given my word — as a man of honour, what can I do?’

  ‘No one wants you to do anything, David. While you still love me, I ask for nothing more. I know you will always look after me and our child — our children, perhaps…’

  ‘I’ll have a settlement drawn up, Gilda, straight away…’ She murmured a word about the ravening wolves, but he ignored it. ‘With the child coming—’

  ‘We don’t even know for certain that it is coming,’ said Gilda, laughing.

  ‘I shall tell my mother,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if the Earl of Trove knows of this…’

  But the Earl of Trove thought an illegitimate brat, begot upon the run-away wife of a common highwayman, need interfere not at all in the plans of his august daughter; and the Countess only requested, frigidly, that her son keep his present disgraceful situation as free as possible from public gossip. ‘And this I must do,’ he said to Gilda. ‘She is after all an innocent girl, her father made up the marriage and persists in the arrangements — she plays only a passive part. And if she’s to be my — if she’s to be Countess of Tregaron—’

  ‘If she’s to be your wife,’ said Gilda, firmly, ‘you want no scandal to touch her. Of course, my love; of course it mustn’t. I care not two pins what happens to Mistress Blanche herself, silly, stuck-up, whey-faced prude that she is — or rather I wish her nothing but ill: a woman who despises me, yet will take a man unwilling to have her, a man in love with another, fresh from that other one’s bed; will accept a husband forcing himself to some sort of passion to get her with an heir — and so go off back to that other… But what happens to your wife happens to you, and as such of course she must be protected; and she shall be…’

  And she kept herself, indeed, very circumspectly as the weeks and months passed, while the marriage plans went forward: the Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio — forgotten now even by the gay gallants of her theatre-going days (who for a little while besieged her house but soon were discouraged out of existence). She went out very little; now and again she drove in the park but with only her mother at her side — she knew no women and must entertain no men. It was all a trifle dull. ‘We were more free to amuse ourselves, Jake and I,’ said her mother fretfully, as they drove in the carriage one day, ‘before you came back from Wales.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d rather I went back there and left you in sole enjoyment of my house and possessions?’

  ‘I only remark that life is not much fun, my dear. There’s no need to be unkind.’

  ‘Well — it isn’t perhaps. I seem fated,’ said Gilda, ‘to dull respectability.’

  ‘You have your lover; I daresay it’s not dull when he’s here. But when he’s married and you have even less of his company—’

  ‘We shall have to make do with that of the baby,’ said Gilda. She added crossly: ‘And the sooner the better.’

  The sooner the better. Her frame was too slight and small for comfortable child-bearing, already the infant seemed disagreeably obtrusive. July was the month decreed by the doctor for its birth. David had pushed forward his marriage to June so as to have his wife sufficiently established in her new position and various great houses, to be left to her own resources. ‘After that — well, she takes me with her eyes open, I haven’t deceived her. She’ll have to be content with only half a marriage. I must be free to be with you, my dearest, all the time of your confinement…’

  February passed and they were into March. The Earl had brought his daughter to London, preparations were going forward for an elaborate ceremony: royalty itself would be present — (Gilda remembered Y Cadno’s reluctance to proceed with their marriage without the presence of his intimate friend the Prince of Wales, and burst into one of her nowadays rare fits of giggling.) The Countess and Lady Anne were now installed in Hanover Square, and were much received at court — for which their ugliness and dullness, said Gilda in the bosom of her family, exactly suited them. Not but what poor Anne had been a kindly creature enough and only in such abject fear of her mother as to make her of no account. ‘They’re taking the opportunity to try and get her settled in life, while all this business of her brother’s wedding goes forward. David says his mother is angling for Lord Crum — you remember him, Mother? Last summer he was sending me bouquets by the cartload.’

  ‘He never paid for them; but Bess palmed off the most faded on him and he never observed it — he’s as blind as a bat.’

  ‘No doubt that’s why the Countess has lit upon him,’ said Gilda more cheerfully. ‘He won’t see what a bargain he’s got with poor great gawky Anne.’

  ‘Surely Lord Tregaron won’t permit it? She’s but sixteen.’

  ‘No, indeed. Anne, it seems, laughs at his poor little lordship, privately when she and David are together; which shows more fun in her than I ever imagined. He’s told her to resist, but the old Countess persists. Till she has both her childr
en settled in misery, I suppose she’ll never rest happy. She’s making up a party this very night, David told me, for Ranelagh: dear Blanche and her father and some others and Anne and little Crum. David, of course, won’t be there.’ He had gone off on a brief visit to the continent to conclude the business interrupted by his mother’s hasty return at the time of his capture and his brother’s death.

  ‘To Ranelagh! How long is it, Gilda, since I was at Ranelagh! In the old days, indeed, before I married your poor father… Well, well!’ Mrs Brown broke off, sighing. ‘And you’ve never been there at all?’

  ‘No, never, and I do long to see it. But first I was the unattainable great lady and mustn’t be seen anywhere, and now I’m exactly the other thing and once again mustn’t be seen anywhere. The truth is, Mother dear,’ said Gilda laughing, ‘that between us we’ve muffed the whole business. Other doxies flaunt their triumphs, go everywhere, their lives are the gayest of the gay; but here am I, neither fish nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring.’ Well, flesh, perhaps, she amended, laughing again, ruefully; but even that must be subdued, kept hidden away in this little house from the eyes of all but her beloved. And anyway, nowadays there was a great deal too much of it. ‘It will have to be a wonderful child, that’s all, to be worth this great belly.’

  ‘You’ll be a deal greater than that before the end,’ said Mrs Brown complacently. But her mind was still on Ranelagh. ‘Could we not go down there, Marigold, and quiz them? Just for the fun of it: life will get ever more dull as the baby comes nearer — this may be our last chance.’

  ‘Go where and quiz whom? And for heaven’s sake, Mother,’ said Gilda automatically, ‘don’t call me Marigold!’

  ‘Why to Ranelagh, child, and quiz little Crum and the old Countess.’

  ‘Quiz—! Mother, you must be mad!’ But her eyes had begun to shine, she bit on her knuckle to stifle the naughty laughter. ‘If we went up to the gallery… If we wrapped ourselves in cloaks and veils…’ And she struggled to her feet. ‘Let’s do it! I’m sick of sitting twiddling my thumbs and if I get any bigger, even that will soon be denied me. Call Jake, send him for my brothers, as many as will come with us.’ And she was rushing off downstairs, big belly and all, rootling through her clothes-press for suitable apparel. By the time James and George arrived, indeed, she had reached a little more discretion and proposed instead of Ranelagh a visit to Marylebone, but her brothers refused it. ‘To Ranelagh or nowhere. The Jew’s Harp is no place for women of quality these days.’