Court of Foxes (23 page)

And it would be for ever. She may have him and with all my heart, thought Gilda, slapping the wet reins on the steaming haunches, lifting her face, ecstatic, to the silver rain — I am free for ever of Gareth y Cadno and the Court of Foxes.

They came to a main road and so to a village; to the great gates of wrought iron with a gilded coat of arms. A man came out of the lodge and stared without much welcome at the un-crested coach and its four post horses — those same horses which the pretended Lord Tregaron, unable to produce the family equippage, had hired to pull the shabby coach on the pretext that so unimposing an outfit would deceive observers in London, and further give them greater safety from the wicked footpads that haunted the roads between Hanover Square and Wales.

She jumped down from the box, one foot to the rim of the wheel, one to a spoke — made a quick pretence to be in difficulties — (I must, I
must
learn again how to behave like a lady!) The man came uncertainly forward. She cried out: ‘It’s my lord! It’s the Earl! I have brought him back!’ and fell into a graceful swoon, just not too soon but that the lodge-keeper had time to catch and support her.

‘My lord! It’s his lordship!’ Other men came running out, flung open the doors of the coach. ‘He’s here — it’s true! Oh, my lord, are you sick? — come quick, he’s a-fainting!’ She came to herself pretty smartly at that and rushed back to him; but it was only a faint, if a genuine one this time, reaction probably from the excitement and unaccustomed exertion. She climbed in with him. ‘Send someone running up to the house with the news, and then let the coach follow — put a man up to drive it very slowly, very carefully…’ And she sat there cradling him in her arms while they rumbled up the long driveway. ‘You’re home and safe, my dearest. Just one effort more and the long trial will be ended.’

An old woman stood at the entrance doorway, awaiting them: an old woman, not fat but enormously broad in the hips, with a small head, like a cherry perched on top of a cottage loaf: dressed in some dark stuff, a sober country magnificence that paid no tribute whatsoever to comfort. Behind her shoulder, leaning eagerly forward like a dog on the leash, yet held in by habitual control, stood a tall young woman, heavy as a lad, with a plain face above her quiet but splendid dress, a big nose and a sad, straight mouth. They said nothing, made no outcry; only stood tense and anxious as he was lifted out and carried up the wide flight of shallow steps past them as they stood there and into the great, pillared marbled hall. Gilda, following, stood unattended while they went to him, saw him laid on a couch, sent footmen and maidservants scurrying for rugs, cushions, restoratives. He must have opened his eyes and said something for after a few moments the Countess, seated erect on a chair at his side, said sharply: ‘Where?’ and both women turned round and looked at her, stared and looked away. For a moment she thought that the younger made an attempt to rise and come to her, but the mother restrained her. ‘Leave her, she shall have attention later.’ And then, evidently in reply to a further word from her son: ‘Yes, yes, every attention. But first we must get you to your room, you must have doctors…’

Gilda stood quietly watching them; watching him carried away out of her sight. After a while a footman appeared with a tray of wine and biscuits, placed a chair for her. The old woman came to her there, marching across the marble floor, pudgy yet oddly stately. ‘Well, now young woman…’ She stopped and stared anew. ‘Have I seen you somewhere before?’

Only as I hung upside-down peering in at the window of your coach, thought Gilda. Aloud she said: ‘Hardly possible, I think?’

‘And your voice… Well, never mind all that. I understand from my son that you have been in some sort instrumental in effecting his escape?’

‘In so far as I stole a coach and four horses from these desperadoes, Madam, got him into it — sick and helpless as you see him — and single-handed drove it here, all at the risk of my own life — why, yes, I think you may say that I was in some sort “instrumental”.’ I must be modest and ladylike, she thought, and not make an enemy of her; but how can I while she stands here so safe and smug and talks to me of ‘instrumental’? She took a small revenge. ‘Your ladyship has received a message — and given an undertaking?’

‘I have been the victim of insolent threats through the danger to my son.’ It did not apparently occur to her that since her son had been ‘rescued’ and not delivered over to her by the gang, the undertaking no longer held. She was doubtless too much concerned in getting rid of her unwelcome guest. ‘Come — I need no longer detain you. You had better be dried and have your wet clothes attended to; and then you shall be given food and drink, sufficiently rewarded for your trouble — my steward shall see to it — and you may then be conducted to any place you care to name, by what means you choose.’

She stood there in the huge, dim hall; in her bedraggled cloak over Blodwen’s bright, tawdry dress, the hood pushed back and the golden floss of her hair hanging about her neck in dark streaks, her face half obscured by the red smears of the rubbed-away ‘scar’. She said: ‘I thank you, Madam. The other favours I will with your permission refuse, including the sufficient reward. As to safe conduct — why then, you may send me home if you will to my house and establishment of servants in South Audley Street, not far from your ladyship’s own mansion in Hanover Square.’ As the old woman goggled, for one moment at least at a loss, she added: ‘It behoves a lady to recognise another, even under such guise as this.’

The Countess started again: stared at her anew. ‘I know now who you are! You’re the woman Blanche told us about: who was there when—’

‘When your eldest son died, Madam, who died in my arms — not hers, for she sat shrieking in her carriage afraid to put out her coward head.’

‘It was you who — who stripped her half naked, tore her jewels from her and flung them into the road for her to stoop and pick up—’

‘She and her woman must tell tales to account for their behaviour on that night. The fact is that she offered me her gew-gaws if I would not ask her to remove her petticoats — which same undergarments I needed only to staunch your son’s wounds; who, but for such help, must certainly have bled to death. True I flung her jewels in the dirt; if she picked them up I know not, I was too busy in attendance upon your sons, Madam, the dying and the dead. And while she crept back to safety and drove off, leaving them there,’ cried Gilda triumphantly, ‘I who had stumbled upon this affair in my attempt to get away from my captors, turned back and went with them into their stronghold again — only so that I might attend upon his lordship. Whom now I have for the second time rescued and so bring back to you.’ And, flown to heights of oratory by this picture of herself, so splendid and now, in her explanations to David so oft-repeated that she almost believed it herself, she concluded: ‘I have lost much in these past weeks, my lady, including something of missishness, perhaps, and some of my dignity, no doubt; and a great deal, I fear, of my pretty little, lady-like ways — but I have lost them in his service. But one thing I retain, one title I retain — and that title I share, that title I have in common with you, my lady Countess. For to you, but also to me, Madam — the present Earl of Tregaron owes his life.’

The daughter came down the stairway; David’s sister — came running down when she saw the great doors opening and the small figure, head up, marching in deeply offended dignity, out of the house. ‘Mother! My lady! — for God’s sake, stop her!’ And she ran after Gilda and turned her — by no means unwilling though she put up so pretty a pretence of dignified refusal — and brought her back into the hall. ‘David has told me — he owes so much to you, we all owe so much to you! Mother, this poor lady — nothing should be too much for us to offer her, no thanks too deep, no honour too great for her…’ And she added in tones in which awe now was added to tenderness and gratitude, a plea which she doubtless felt her mother could hardly resist. ‘In another country, she is a marchioness.’

The Countess of Tregaron, it transpired however, thought on the whole but lowly of foreign titles. ‘Who
was
this Marchese d’Astonia, I know nothing of any such family?’ His relict now sat at her table nevertheless: slightly comic but totally exquisite in a gown of the huge Lady Anne’s, tied and tucked up and in some sort made wearable; and was altogether made much of in obedience to very imperative commands from the sickroom. ‘D’Astonia Subeggio?
I
never heard of the name.’

‘The owner existed, however, without your ladyship’s permission,’ said Gilda. Let them but get through the next week or two and she would be back in her Bijou and David her lover — and never more than that, thank God! — so really after all there was no need to accept these gratuitous insults. ‘I should know, I suppose, for he married me.’

‘Evidently surviving his marriage but a short time,’ said the Countess, looking her insolently up and down.

‘Your ladyship’s husband was less fortunate,’ said Gilda; but this time had the cowardice to drop her voice a little and when challenged refused to repeat herself. She embarked upon one of her little impromptus, to forestall further questioning as to her antecedents. ‘My husband had been my guardian. My father, the younger son of a great house had been killed with my mother in a driving accident, while visiting their friend in Italy — I, a small child, alone surviving. He took me into his home and thereafter made me his daughter. And if your ladyship asks me what was my father’s family or my mother’s, I regret I can supply you with but very little information — even if it were your right to demand it. I knew myself only as Marigelda — it was his wish to make me all his own, first as his foster-child, then as his bride; and then, all too soon, his widow.’

‘A love child, evidently,’ said the old woman, rich in insolence; as though to herself.

‘Like Gareth the highwayman,’ said Gilda; as though to
her
self.

The Countess shot up out of her chair as though she had been stung and without ceremony led the way up to where David, ever protesting his return to almost normal strength, sat cosseted in a chair in the drawing-room. He had been kept very much to his room and therefore knew nothing, presumably, of the situation obtaining downstairs. Now, confronted by his mother in a towering rage, he looked up in astonishment. ‘David! You insist that you are now quite well again. Nothing keeps this — lady — here but your demand that she remain in the house until you are recovered.’ He struggled up to his feet, casting aside the swaddling rugs, but she beat down his protestations. ‘She may have what assistance she requires in her return to London where she claims to have an establishment — and “establishment” may well be the word,’ raged Madam Countess, speaking a little more truly than she knew. ‘For the rest, my hospitality is exhausted. I must ask her to go.’

He was paralysed with horror. His sister threw herself upon her knees at her mother’s feet. ‘Mother, dear Madam, reflect — she saved David’s life!’

‘So she never tires of reminding us,’ said the Countess, giving her daughter a yank to bring her up to her feet, which however had only the effect of toppling her ludicrously to her hands and knees. ‘If what she wants is a reward, she shall have it. But she must go.’

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.