“My dear, my dear, it was in exactness what occurred when you returned from Whitehall Palace after your audience with the King. You did return home at the half-hour past eight by your own watch. You were in a daze, stricken for Lydia’s sake, easy prey for Sir Nick should your anger rise high. Thus, arrived at your house, you did go straight to your bedchamber. There you sat in a chair facing the window. Do I say true?”
Fenton nodded. He could not speak, or so he thought. Nevertheless his lips moved.
“Yet Lydia,” it was all hoarseness, “was being poisoned lightly, by slow poison, ere I came into the person of Sir Nick! I cured her! I was not there before! Who, then …?”
“Oh, do you not guess?”
“Sir Nick?”
“Yes!” replied Meg. “Though he did send Kitty to buy the poison, and ’twas her hand put it into the sack posset—as you proved for yourself, when your wits were sharp—still was Sir Nick the guilty man. Are you convinced?”
“I … I …”
“Hear me! Sir Nick, the true Sir Nick, was become near crazed for Kitty and her most odd kind of love. Did she not press him to be rid of his wife, and also of the true Meg York? Did not rat-mouthed Kitty describe Meg York (not yet myself) to the apothecary, as the woman who sent Kitty to buy the poison?”
“But I … returning home from Whitehall that night … sitting at the window of my bedchamber …!”
“Now do you recollect it! You came to your bedchamber close after half-past eight of the clock. Or say by your watch, which you put down on the dressing table. Of late you had grown accustomed to take a good deal of claret at supper; and you kept a decanter of claret, with goblet, on your dressing table. Now speak! Was that decanter full to the stopper, or no?”
Fenton shied away from Meg’s intent, tear-stained eyes and eyelashes. But he looked back.
“It was full to the stopper,” he said. “I seized decanter and goblet to drink, but—but put down both unused.” Horribly, in black and white and splashed colour, the scene unrolled in memory.
“I sat down,” Fenton muttered, his voice growing louder. “For a brief time, if it were writ down, I thought on all suspicions against Lydia. Yet I could not, I could not, credit them. I leaped up from the chair, in a flare of rage …”
“Rage,” whispered Meg.
“Yet I sat down again! I …”
“Looked out on blackness,” said Meg, and now she put her arms round him. “That was your own thought. But in your rage (did this not happen softly, too, in the apothecary’s shop?) the soul of Sir Nick again triumphed. In a black ten minutes, when you knew not what you did, the black poisoning was done and over.”
“But where was the poison? There! Ace-ace-deuce: a winning trick!”
“Dear heart, no. Have you forgot the black-velvet suit, with dried blood on the sleeves, you wore on your first day in the past? It still hung in the dressing closet of your bedchamber. None had touched it, as Giles did say when afterwards you called for it. You yourself had forgot (though the soul of Sir Nick had not) that in the pocket of its coat was an apothecary’s packet with one hundred and thirty grains of arsenic.”
For the first time Fenton began to tremble badly. Meg, head down, forced and stammered out words which hurt her.
“Sir Nick, when your mind was gone from your body, poured forth a goblet of claret. In this he did pour also above ninety grains of tasteless arsenic from the packet. In your body Sir Nick crept down, wearing your smile with the evil turned inside, to Lydia’s chamber. Who should look upon him, since the servants, were at supper?
“Yet Kitty Softcover prowled close, at the door of the chamber opposite; once my room. Kitty herself had crept in after you, with a key to the front door, at this early hour because the servants were away. Even Sam, thus obeying a command you had just given, was not outside the front door. Kitty would have her claws into Lydia’s jewel coffers. Who could tell Lydia would have gone abed so monstrous early? ’Twas so that Kitty, all a burning lump of thievery, durst not enter her chamber. Yet Kitty saw Sir Nick, since he set the door partway open.
“The time was short, so very brief! You were in Lydia’s bedchamber but two minutes, entering shortly beyond twenty minutes towards the hour of nine. Now ask of yourself but what a cunning magistrate would ask!”
Fenton shivered as she pressed him more tightly.
“Nay,” he said, “I begin to credit—”
“Your persuasion over Lydia was complete. She too … that’s to say, she loved you. She was of gentle and good character. She was fast in obedience to the one firm command you had given. From whose hand but yours, in all the world, would she have accepted any morsel of food or drink?”
“Yes, it grows bitter clear!”
“What drink, other than claret from your bedchamber, could have poisoned her? Every dram of wine, as said Giles, was locked in the wine cellar. There was not even, as also he said, a drop of barley water. And this is truth, though it come from the lips of the devil!”
As Meg spoke of Lydia, Fenton could at times feel the very emanation of her hot jealousy, which she tried with success to hold in check. Also, as his wits returned, he saw what in his blindness he had never before seen. He was not the only person who struggled against the coffin lid of another soul. Mary Grenville—though already succubus, witchwoman, call her what you like—also must have within her the handsome, vixenish soul of the true Meg York.
He and Meg were like unto each other, and had ever behaved as such.
“In those two minutes in Lydia’s bedchamber,” he said, “what speech passed between Lydia and mys … that is, Sir Nick?”
“I’ll not tell you! Not ever or ever or ever!”
From the menagerie rose again the roar of the lion named King Charles. The lanthorns of keepers now moved inside the windows, as the keepers quietened the lesser beasts. But Meg was again in fear.
“That tower!” She meant the Wakefield Tower, and caught at memory. “There was a man did call that drink a last bumper. The warders on the soldiery will be here!”
“I’ll not go,” said Fenton, still tormented and crazed with wonder. “One more word. I know not why, but you are mine and I hold you. If I go to the ship, you go with me.”
Meg threw back her head, regarding him with a wild look which again brought on her tears.
“Much of this,” Fenton went on, speaking rapidly, “I now imagine for myself. Sir Nick (in my shape!) took the poisoned goblet from Lydia’s bedchamber. In my … his room he cleansed it, using water from the pitcher in the bowl on the dressing table, and flinging the dregs from a window. Nod if I say true! Good!
“Wherefore,” he continued, “the poison was not swallowed at supper. It was swallowed at a trifle beyond twenty minutes to nine. Stop! Could Lydia die so soon as midnight? Nay, this is beyond any possi …
“Come, I had forgot! Ninety-odd grains of arsenic? Any one of the stomach cramps, striking hard and sudden after a few hours’ weakening of the victim, may kill with the shock of it. And so Giles described her death.
“More! With so monstrous great a quantity of arsenic, the pain would come well within eight minutes; on Lydia, it worked swifter than with most. All was squeezed and compressed into brief seconds. The murderer had returned to his bedchamber. Judith Pamphlin, upon her coming upstairs, did in truth hear Lydia moan even before my wits were unsealed, and I awoke. And this, I think, was at ten minutes to nine. True?”
“So says the devil.” Meg added: “He hath seen so many deaths!”
“And Lydia …” Fenton hesitated. “Lydia must certes have been sensible who had given her the poison. Yet even to the woman Pamphlin she said only that she would speak with me, not uttering a word of the visit with the goblet. She made no ado, Meg. Not even when she died.”
“I allow of it!” said Meg, lowering her head and sobbing. “In part ’twas because
… nay, I’ll speak no more of her love. I won’t! And in part because she thought it a judgment on her, since in truth she did once dispatch a letter to betray you.”
“I killed her, Meg.”
“Nay, thou didst not!” gritted Meg, using the familiar with her intensity of feeling. “I prove it … I prove it by a secret, unknown thing. When Sir Nick had at length committed his final foul deed,” her voice was hushed, “his soul was drawn and plucked from him ere you opened your eyes. His soul was taken away …”
“By the devil?”
“Nay, or you would be dead. By Someone,” Meg’s eyes wandered in affright, “of whom I dare not speak. But since then Sir Nick’s soul is gone from you. Yours is that of Nicholas Fenton of Cambridge, set forever in the flesh you wear now. Ask me no more. You are yet hounded by humankind. Kitty, the cook-maid …”
Fenton, looking back with a glare of revelation on his different behaviour of late weeks, threw it from his mind as he grasped after Meg’s words.
“Would Kitty, the Alsatian wench and I think known to many magistrates, durst have denounced me for murder? Or be believed if she did?”
“What! Under the protection of my Lord Shaftesbury and the Green Ribbon? She is believed; and walks bedecked with jewels amid stout swordsmen to protect her. The design is complete to wrest you from protection of the King …”
“The King?”
“Oh, the King will yield. As always he does, against too vast a public outcry. Did you not so tell him to his face, as concerned another matter?”
Now Meg lifted her arms, as though in passionate and low-voiced agony.
“Fraud and cheat!” she said. “All against you has been fraud, since that dim, lost first night when you made your false bargain with the devil. Most readily he could agree to all your ‘conditions’ in the strict letter of them. For he himself (the devil’s logic) would not do what was to be done against you. It was decreed by history. His rages came not from your ‘conditions,’ but because you mocked at him. You misread the rages, and were in quagmire where you thought yourself most safe. And yet, for all, you did defeat him. —What’s amiss?”
“Giles’s manuscript,” said Fenton. “Also a fraud. And not even yet writ!”
“And if not?”
“Well, why shall it be writ? So that posterity—once Giles by bribery hath destroyed all broadsheets or pamphlets, and even the Newgate record—posterity may not see a great name shamed. Posterity shall read of a murder, with pages omitted by deliberation; but of a good-souled Sir Nick who died many years later. Why, it would appear I am to be hanged after all.”
“Not so!” said Meg. “This shall not be, if you have the boldness to go forth and change history as once you had. Have you that boldness?”
The breeze from outside, still rustling on Tower Green, blew at Fenton with fine and cold invigoration, like a plunge into cold water.
“I have!” he said, happily smiling, and tapped the sword scabbard. “Are you prepared?”
“Prepared?”
“To accompany me; what else? Curse it, I have not yet seen you all a-sobbing and shrinking. I say we now run the hazard too close!”
Meg whipped back and threw open her cloak.
“It was I,” she blurted out, “who persuaded the King I must go with you. Round my waist, under gown and smock, there is a belt of pockets: all of precious stones for money, and, wrapped proof against water, a letter from His Majesty to King Louis of France. Yet, when I saw you, I was resolved to stay here unless you bade me to …”
“Then I bid you!”
“For love?”
“Yes! But speak of that when we are safe. D’ye hear? There’s no more noise of a carouse from the Wakefield Tower. They make their way here!”
“I am still the devil’s creature,” said Meg, who could not stop tears; “whether I be Meg York or Mary Grenville, I am still the …”
Fenton, who had started for the door, turned round.
“Do you think I, who have myself dealt with the devil, care one lead hog whether you are his servant or no? Yet I think Someone hath altered you. No matter! You cannot swim in that cloak and gown; put them by!”
Now it was Fenton, not Meg, who heard the clock ticking and saw the sands running out.
If they found her here, he thought, she would slip like himself into the grasp of my Lord Shaftesbury, who always smiled but never let go.
Still Meg hesitated. Throwing back her curls, she cast a quick, terrified glance towards the door to the sentry walk. Fenton summoned up every fibre of will.
“D’ye fear the devil?” He did not speak loudly. “Well, this I warrant. We will together make escape from the Tower, though the devil himself stand outside that door. Come!”
Meg flung off her cloak. Her black-and-silver gown she twisted upwards: bending forward, tearing and rending the gown, she brought it up over her head and away from her arms. Standing in silk smock, stockings, and shoes, she kicked off the shoes and hurried after Fenton.
Though the upriver wind was dying, Fenton held the heavy door as he moved it open. Meg slipped out past him, into the angle of the battlements against the tower. Closing the door carefully, he followed her, pushing her forward.
Far below them the water slapped high and seethed against the wall. Fenton cast a quick look to his left. In the windows of the Wakefield Tower yellow lanthorns began to move down.
“One hand atop the battlement,” he whispered, gripping Meg round the waist to push her; “up to the opening between; then jump! ’Ware the tide and the wharf piles as you swim under the wharf. Now!”
Meg, about to comply, turned her head to the left. Then she stood as though paralyzed. Fenton also looked to the left along the sentry walk between here and St. Thomas’s Tower.
Facing him on the sentry walk, some twenty feet away, dressed in white and with sword drawn, stood Captain Duroc.
Captain Duroc.
The moon, almost overhead, was brilliant and with flat shadows. But it played tricks with eyesight. Duroc’s gauntness and height made him appear a giant. Out of his big periwig was thrust the bony lower jaw, lower teeth glinting in a jeer. Up swept his right hand with the rapier: elbow crooked, hand at head height, sword point extended straight towards Fenton.
No longer was his periwig gold-dusted or his voice comical. He was tall death on the sentry walk.
“No, I am not de devil,” Duroc’s harsh voice whispered. “And I am not sent ’ere by milor’ Shaftesbury. I was a guest at dees banquet, eh? You ’ave not heard dem shout from the window of their guest that disappear? Leetle nobleman! Sweet Meg which was my bedfel …”
Nobody saw the fire hiss along the fuse of hatred between Duroc and Fenton. But Fenton’s hands were round Meg’s waist, and she felt the hatred through his muscles.
“Up! I’ll swing you!” Fenton muttered to Meg. “Jump!”
“Will you follow?”
“In a moment!”
“Then I’ll stay,” replied a hard-breathing Meg, “whilst you stay.”
Captain Duroc’s low-pitched cackle of a jeer floated towards them, above the hiss of the water below.
“You will not leap dere. No, no, no!” he said. “I stand so far away (eh) to teach you how I am upon you, voilà, if you t’ink to try!”
Fenton darted out from Meg’s side—and almost toppled over the side of the sentry walk, which was hardly wider than six feet. But he swung round to face Duroc.
“The leetle nobleman,” sighed Duroc, “weel not fight. No! He weel run. I am Duroc! I have a botte too many for him!”
Fenton lugged out.
“God damn ye,” he said, not loudly, “now shew me a botte I don’t know!”
“Take care!” cried Meg.
And even Meg, who was very far from being squeamish, had to clench teeth on a scream.
F
or they flew at each other along the sentry walk, like two men in a famous duel on Calais sands, as though each would drive sword through the other without a stop. But instinctively both recoiled, their shoes grinding on the stones, within lunging distance of each other.
Out shot Duroc’s sword point, with a moon-flash on the blade, striking to pierce through Fenton’s left eye. Fenton, parrying high with a clack which resounded towards the Wakefield Tower, heard Duroc’s shoe slip and stumble. Fenton went out at full lunge for Duroc’s heart. And Duroc’s laugh croaked as both men darted back to guard position.
The pseudo Frenchman had too immense a length of arm and leg. The point of Fenton’s blade, out at full length, had fallen four inches short of his opponent’s chest.
“You see, leetle nobleman?” panted his opponent. “You cannot touch me!”
“No?”
“No!”
The hand guard of Duroc’s sword, like a small cup of lacework steel, had on each side a quillon projecting and then curving back like a narrow hook at the end. Fenton saw it by moon-flash, as Duroc elongated like a white snake for a thrust below the belly. Fenton, parrying blade-downwards, whacked the sword aside and cross-lunged for the calf of Duroc’s extended right leg.
Point and blade ripped white stocking and flesh from the edge of the calf, with blood that swelled grey-black. “Captain Duroc,” now shrieking out an imprecation in the language of Hungary, flew in to attack with his immense reach. Four times he lunged without riposte from Fenton, and Fenton laughed and Duroc became crazed, because he could not penetrate Fenton’s guard.
“Guard yourself!” Fenton yelled, and steadied for the most dangerous trick in swordplay.
For the fifth time, on this occasion in quarte, Duroc’s blade streaked out. Fenton’s left arm, swordless, swept inside and knocked the blade wide to the right. Darting inside Duroc’s guard, now at murderous infighting, he again drove for his opponent’s heart.
The point pierced and sank deep—but not deep enough for the hard fibre that surrounds the heart. Fenton, leaping back, parried by shaved second the long thrust towards his forehead over the right eye.
The Devil in Velvet Page 39
