Barbara Denvil - The Flame Eater

Emeline stood quickly, pushing back her stool. “We’ve discussed all these possibilities before and I’m not ever going to think about it again. It was all Adrian. Talking about Maman like that, Avice, is mean.”

“It isn’t mean. It’s admiration.” Avice smoothed the creases in her skirts. They turned to gold in the sunlight. “Martha and Maman together, just think of it. To protect you from Peter when Papa wouldn’t listen to any suggestion about calling off the marriage negotiations. And then the fury when they realised Papa was living with his mistress, and spending his money on her when he wouldn’t even let Maman have more than one candle in her bedchamber. All that hypocritical preaching about holy morality and being chaste and no new dresses. And there he was romping in piles of cash with naked women.”

“Maman didn’t know about the other woman.” Emeline shivered in spite of the sunbeams on her back.

“What if she did? We wouldn’t have known. She could have seen Papa and followed him one day. And both Maman and Martha would march into battle just as bravely as the king, I know they would. And just like in battle, it wouldn’t have been murder. It would have been a righteous war.”

Jerrid Chatwyn reclined in bored lethargy for a week in one of the spare bedchambers at the family house on the Strand, then ordered a litter followed by a cartload of bedding, medicines and wine barrels, and transferred himself back to his own rooms at Westminster Palace. His body, fit and honed during past years of joust and jest, healed quickly. But he was still in bed under doctor’s orders when his elder brother, also keen to return to court, trundled in to visit.

“You’re a fool, Jerrid,” the earl informed him. “You could have been killed. All this absurd playing at gallantry and trying to make me look like a sluggard in comparison. I’m not impressed, not at all.”

“I didn’t do it to impress you, Symond,” his brother informed him. “And my opinion of you never changes, whatever you might get up to. Nor do I expect to change yours of me. But you could pass the jug. My cup’s empty.”

The earl glowered, repositioned himself on the stool beside the bed, and topped up his brother’s wine cup from the brimming jug of best Malmsey. “Damned fool of a brother. Damned fool of a son.” He had topped up his own cup too, and now drained it for the third time. “The Chatwyn name’s already been held up to gossip and slander. Now brawling in the streets, and young Adrian getting himself killed.”

Jerrid raised an eyebrow. “Still thinking it was Nicholas who slaughtered Peter, are you, Symond? Or you’ve finally accepted it was Adrian?”

“Adrian. Nicholas.” The earl shrugged and poured more wine. “What difference? I’ve lost my previous boy, my heir butchered, whatever devil’s hand did the deed. So now Nicholas likes to show himself a hero, as you do, Jerrid. But I know you both better. Peter was my hero, poor lad. I’ll miss him, you know, till my own dying day.”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than I even thought you.” Jerrid turned away. “It’s natural enough to care for your eldest son. But to merit Peter over Nicholas?”

“Nicholas? A smarter boy than I once gave him credit for, perhaps. But Peter? He was exceptional in every way.” The earl stood, tossing back the stool. “I’ll not listen to my boy criticised, but I’ll tell you this, Jerrid, before I go. He’d have brought pride to the family, instead of this foolhardy mummery. Peter was a red blooded Chatwyn, and all the girls fell in admiration at his feet. No nonsenses of book learning or secret errands. No sneaking about the countryside in shoddy clothes and a false identity. Peter was proud to act under his own name, and show his talents.” And the earl finished the last cup of wine, turned on his heel and marched from the chamber. The heavy door swung back on iron hinges and thudded shut.

Jerrid Chatwyn sighed, closed his eyes, and silently wondered if he would be strong and steady enough to climb from the bed, cross over to the table, and retrieve whatever little was left in the wine jug.

The baroness was organising her imminent journey. Petronella would stay with Emeline, while Martha would return to the Wrotham manor with the others. It was Sysabel who fell between the cracks.

The Lady Elizabeth sighed. “My responsibility, as always, I assume. I’ll take the girl. But the sooner she’s wed, the better. She gives me the twitches.” The lady patted her stomacher, broad scarlet pleats over a small well filled belly. It was a long balmy afternoon, dinner not long over, and the sleepy sunbeams crept into everyone’s eyes. “Yes, marry the girl sooner done the better is. But now,” Lady Elizabeth murmured, “that duty is for Nicholas, with Adrian gone. And Symond’s duty too, though he’ll not stir himself, I’ll be bound.”

“Symond is snoozing upstairs.”

“Symond is snoozing even when he’s awake.”

The baroness smiled. “You’ve a poor opinion of your brother, my lady.”

“Who? Oh, Symond. Yes indeed,” sighed the lady. “The family is much flawed. Once I had hopes for young Adrian. He seemed a bright boy. But his father, you know, was a gambler and a drunkard. Being the youngest he never inherited a farthing, but he came into a little coin when he married, for the wife was one of the Bridgeworth girls. Then he gambled her money. Cheated at dice I heard, but I cannot see the merit in cheating if you do not win even then. He was a bully too and my least favourite sibling when I was a girl. Silly little wife had not a pennyweight of sense either. Drowned. Both of them. A grand trip to Flanders, costs borrowed from Symond who hoped to be rid of them. Well, rid of them he was, for they had the stupidity to sail off into a storm. I washed my hands of them.”

“You didn’t,” the baroness pointed out. “You ended up with Adrian and Sysabel.”

“I was reasonably fond of them when they were younger,” remembered Aunt Elizabeth with vague disinterest. “But then they grew up.”

“Sysabel has not stopped crying.”

“It will teach her the worth of prayer and duty,” Sysabel’s aunt announced. “And she may come to appreciate my own efforts as guide and chaperone a little more. She alone will inherit from me eventually, not that I have too much to leave and have as yet no plans to depart. But no doubt young Nick and Symond too will add something for her marriage portion.”

Nicholas still kept to his bed, strictly commanded by his doctor. The half tester spread its painted silks across the headboard, surrounding him in gentle shadows. He watched his wife enter with relief. “Smuggle the horses around the back outside the window,” he told her. “Alert the grooms to say nothing, warn the horses not to neigh, tell my doctors I’m fast asleep, grab some cheese for supper, stuff a flask of wine into the neck of your gown, take down the shutters, open the casement, find a nice long vine of hanging ivy for climbing, and we’ll escape off into the countryside before the sun goes down. I think I should become a highway robber.”

Emeline nodded. “I almost believe you.”

“Have you any idea,” her husband demanded, “how unutterably dreary it is stuck in this damned bed for days on end? I’m stiff enough to carve into a table. My only pleasure is stumbling out of bed to piss or cursing at the apothecary.”

“Just two more days, my love. The doctor promises you can get out of bed and limp downstairs on Friday. I shall clear the spicery of lavender, and we shall have salmon and roast duck for dinner. A last celebration before we say goodbye to Maman and Avice.”

He grinned back. His forehead was still thickly bandaged, his left hand was invisible beneath a wadding of linen, and under the covers his right knee was swaddled. He also had two broken ribs and a small wedge of flesh missing from his left earlobe. But, he assured everyone, he was now feeling exceedingly well. “I lost so much blood during those damned attacks, there was none left to feed the leeches once I got home. But bed rest isn’t my favourite pastime as you know, my sweet, though you might think it is, the amount of time I’ve been tied to it over the year. Besides, I feel wretched about Adrian. And even worse about Sysabel.”