Рита Браун - Hotspur

Crawford missed that Ronnie Haslip was making fun of him. “How are you?”

“Fine. Two things.” Ronnie knew that with Crawford you got the best result by being brief and direct, most emphatically not the Virginia Way. “The hunt club is sponsoring a class at the Fall Classic Horse Show, Thanksgiving weekend this year. We’d like a perpetual trophy— silver, I think. It will cost quite a bit.”

“How much?”

“Seven thousand.”

“My God, Ronnie, how big is this thing?”

“Well, it’s huge. Sterling silver. The kind of stuff they used to do in the 1800s.”

“Why is Sister being so grand? Not like her, really.”

“It’s a secret. She wants us to do it in honor of Nola. The Nola Bancroft Perpetual Trophy, Ladies Over Fences.”

“Oh.” Crawford thought a moment. “Put me down for three thousand five hundred. That ought to get the ball rolling.”

“That is exceedingly generous, Crawford. Not only will Sister be grateful, the Bancrofts will be thrilled, once they know, of course.”

“Awful thing.”

“Yes. Oh, I just heard that Tedi intends to bury her August tenth at the farm. The club will be attending en masse.”

“Naturally.” He found this news depressing even though he never knew Nola. Funerals were not Crawford’s preferred social activity, but one must play one’s part. And he was not an unfeeling man, simply an overreaching one. “Ronnie, you grew up with Nola. Was she what everyone says?”

“And more.” Ronnie laughed. “There was a capriciousness about Nola that was divine, really, unless you were in love with her. Then she’d run you crazy or break your heart.”

“Was she aware of what she was doing to people?”

“I always thought she was like those Indian warriors collecting scalps. She’d keep four, five, who knows how many, on a string.”

“Sleeping with them?”

“Well . . .” Ronnie didn’t want to cast aspersions on any lady, but how could he put this? “Let’s just say that Nola was a high-spirited animal with prodigious energy.”

“For Christ’s sake, Ronnie!”

“She’d have lunch with one fellow, go to a party with another, and home with a third. She was heartless.” Ronnie laughed.

“You weren’t in love with her?” Crawford couldn’t resist this little dig.

“I wasn’t rich enough for Nola,” came the even reply, as Ronnie refused to rise to the bait.

“Neither was Guy Ramy, from what I hear.”

“But he was as beautiful as Nola was. Jet-black curly hair, ice blue eyes, shoulders as wide as Atlas himself. Fearless on a horse. Not the best rider, but fearless.”

“That’s how he got the nickname Hotspur?”

“Yes and no. I’m assuming you know the life of Sir Henry Percy.”

“Of course I do, Ronnie.” A note of indignation darkened Crawford’s voice. “I graduated Phi Beta Kappa.”

Bold, impetuous, strong, Henry Percy was the eldest son of the 1st Earl of Northumberland. Henry was born on May 20, 1364. He was taught to fight like all noble-born boys, displaying a true gift for it. In his early twenties he harried the Scots, who gave him the name Hotspur for his vigorous border patrols.

When Richard II began to show clear signs that he wasn’t up to the demands of being king, unrest grew throughout England. Many giggled that Richard would make a better queen than king. Hotspur and his father helped put Henry Bolingbroke on the throne in 1399, who then called himself Henry IV.

Hotspur’s daring brought him fame and admiration that perhaps incited a certain jealousy in the king. But Henry IV was no fool. He rewarded Hotspur with lands and offices in northern England and Wales, two places where a strong military leader was necessary.

The Percys demolished the Scots at Humbleton Hill in Durham on September 14, 1402. Henry IV, who was vainly trying to suppress the Welsh, paled by comparison. Henry’s ego clouded his usually calculating judgment. He wouldn’t allow Hotspur to ransom the Scottish nobles he had captured, a common policy that would have fattened Hotspur’s pocketbook as well as the crown’s.

To add insult to injury, Henry wouldn’t pay the bill for Hotspur’s border warfare. Not only was the king jealous, he was cheap.

Furious, Hotspur and his father raised a rebellion to depose the king in 1403. Henry, more clever than the Percys realized, intercepted Hotspur near Shrewsbury before he could join up with his father. Though outnumbered, Hotspur fought like the lion he was but in the end he was beaten, hanged, drawn, and quartered. His violent end came on July 21, at the age of thirty-nine.

“There was always a sense,” Ronnie’s bass voice intoned, “that Guy would draw his sword against the wrong man.”

“Sword as in weapon or sword as in cock?”

“Both.”

“So he ran around on Nola?”

“Oh no. No, he was totally in love with her. But while she might have been in love with him, that didn’t prevent her from enjoying other men’s attentions.”

“But people say she would have married him.” Crawford began to understand how complex this was and how reluctant people were to tell what they knew. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that. Except the dogs were now wide awake.

“Some people. I think that opinion reveals more about the romantic nature of the speaker than it does about Nola.”

“Exactly what do you mean, Ronnie?” Crawford lacked the patience for linguistic subtlety as practiced in Virginia.

“Unearthly beauty, child of Midas, marries country boy. People love that sort of thing. She wouldn’t have married him. She saw what Sybil endured when she married Ken Fawkes.”

“He’s done quite well. With the old man’s help, of course.”

“Yes,” Ronnie inhaled, “but he’ll never be one of them. He was set up, then propped up by Edward, so everyone wonders about Ken’s abilities. And Sybil bears the Fawkes name, not Bancroft.”

“So?”

“Crawford. This is Virginia. No one forgets a goddamned thing. No way in green hell would Nola be Nola Ramy.”

“But Ken’s no slouch. In time, Guy may have proved he possessed business acumen.”

“At the time that Nola was flaming around with Guy, Ken was struggling not just to master the real estate business but to master the nuances of the life into which he had married. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are different. And I know that you know they are. Old money, I mean. Really old money.”

“Not like my money.” Crawford’s voice had an edge.

“I didn’t say that.” Ronnie didn’t have to say it.

“You weren’t in love with Nola but you did like her?” Crawford changed the subject.

A beat passed, then Ronnie honestly replied, “She was a vacuous, spoiled child who had no feelings for anyone but herself. But she was also fun, enormous fun.”

Crawford knew that in this assessment Ronnie betrayed his own emotions. Perhaps he was once in love with Guy Ramy or one of the other men Nola had so easily vanquished. “Then maybe it’s better that she always be young and beautiful in everyone’s mind.”

“She would have been an impossible middle-aged bitch. Women like Nola can’t age. It kills them.”

“In her case, someone else did the job.”

Ronnie didn’t respond; he waited a moment and then asked, “I also thought you might want to know given the discussion we had about hunt staff last week that David Headdon left Shenandoah Valley Hounds last night. Left them flat.”

“Hmm.” Crawford smiled. The huntsman David Headdon was known both for his brilliance and his temper. “Does Sister know?”

“Sister knows everything.”

Crawford chuckled. “Almost, but she doesn’t know who killed Nola Bancroft.”

Ronnie respected Sister, even though many people might have interpreted his coziness with Crawford as a betrayal of her. He truly believed that Crawford needed to be joint-master of the Jefferson Hunt. Let him pour money into the club until a true hunting master could be found to succeed Sister should she step down or step up to heaven. At this point in the political development of looking for a joint-master, Ronnie kept his support of Crawford quiet.