Death of a Radical (15 page)

“Look at our little Grub. He's a man—well, a little
man,” Charles commented. The impression stared back at them as if it knew more than they.

“You do not take this seriously?”

Favian's voice recalled their attention. He was leaning forward, his whole body tense.

Charles cast him an idle glance.

“And what must I take seriously, young Grub?”

“There are good men out there without work who fear they cannot feed their families. Don't you see it?”

“What rot!” Charles scoffed, reclining once more on his couch. “There's none of that here.”

“Honest working men have the right to defend the customs of their trade.” A carmine flush stained Grub's cheekbones. “How can you not see that a man, a good man; a decent, hard-working man, who cannot earn enough to feed his family and fears for the future—how can you not see that such a man might grow desperate? These are unjust times—there is no justice.”

Jarrett had never seen the boy so animated. He had broken his pose again. The composition was too bland. It lacked something—a vibrant splash of color to focus the eye. Blue. Something blue …

“You are too dramatic,” said Charles. “Too much poetry, I dare say.” He glanced at Jarrett and waved a white hand. “The pose, the pose, Grub,” he chided.

Favian resumed his position with a little huff of breath. A mischievous expression crossed Charles's face as he lolled against the sofa back. “Who would imagine that our little scholar should turn out to be such a firebrand?”
he pondered. Jarrett shot him a questioning look. Charles waved his glass in an airy gesture. “Thinking of what brought him here …”

“That was an accident, a misunderstanding,” Favian protested.

“A misunderstanding, Grub?” Charles lifted his brows in exaggerated surprise. “You assaulted the Warden's lodgings with an incendiary device!”

“I was making a poetic offering and by an unlucky chance the wind caught the balloon. I'll admit I was drunk but what were the servants thinking of, leaving the window wide open in the middle of February?”

“One might have thought the Warden wanted his guests to catch cold,” murmured Raif. “He should have secured his defenses.”

“It was an inventive form of attack,” conceded Charles. Favian's blush deepened.

“I hope my poetry may inflame men's hearts but it was never my intention to cause an actual conflagration,” he stated with dignity.

“Ah! But consequences, my dear Grub! Your poetic flame consumed half a brocade curtain and the Warden's second-best table cloth. You are lucky it was not his best linen—you might have been sent down.”

“Peace, Charles. Let us accept that it was ill-fortune that turned Grub's bark of poesy into a Congreve rocket.” Jarrett looked up and met the boy's eyes. They glowed with such affection and trust, it was unnerving. The sensitive mouth curved in a playful expression.

“Miss Lonsdale is a fine woman, isn't she?” he piped up irrelevantly. “She's not married, I understand? She seems a very intelligent woman and a warm nature too; interested in others. We spoke of you, cousin, the other day while we drank our tea.”

“She is a fine woman,” Charles chimed in from his sofa, “though rather too much character for my taste. I swear I did my best to draw her off, Raif, but she had already spied your bird of paradise. Those plump partridges are like magnets to respectable women; they pretend to disapprove but they are as curious as cats. You're sure to be condemned over the tea cups. Never mind. In their hearts the ladies love a rogue.”

“Miss Lonsdale is no gossip,” Raif reproved him. He could see just the right blue in his mind's eye—a cross between cornflower and Venetian.

“Poor fool! As if it isn't the nature of the sex to tell each other everything.”

“We need some color. A handkerchief about the neck maybe—do you have one?”

Favian blinked. His hand slipped inside the breast of his coat, white against the dark. He drew out a freshly laundered scarlet handkerchief and held it out tentatively.

“Wrong color; I need blue, I think.”

Favian looked down at the handkerchief in his hand a moment then folded it tenderly. He tucked it up one sleeve and resumed his pose, gazing studiously into the middle distance.

If he used the view through the window beyond—substituted a summer sky for the winter one—that would give him the blue. Jarrett penciled a note on the margin of a paper lying on the table beside him and picked up his brush again.

“So much about women baffles me,” Favian was saying, “even their very names. Well, Miss Lonsdale is Henrietta, I think. That's simple enough. But Molly for instance, or Lally,” his tongue stuttered a little over the word. “I heard that name for the first time the other day and I can't for the life of me think where it might come from.”

Charles lifted himself up on one elbow to stare at him.

“Adelaide, I should imagine,” Jarrett supplied, adding a murmured, “Down Charles!” My lord shut his mouth and lay back against the upholstered velvet.

Favian broke his pose to stretch a little. He fiddled with his cuff and resumed his position.

“What's another word for yellow?” he asked. “I have been through corn and straw and sun. None will do.”

“Piss,” offered Charles, gazing at the way his wine tilted in the bowl of his glass.

Jarrett was contemplating the shadows behind Favian's left ear.

“Citrine, mustard, ochre,” he suggested.

“I have a new composition in mind,” Favian confessed. “Not a classical form but a ballad. A poem for the people. I happened to meet a singer, cousin Raif, a local man, on my way here. You should hear them sing, here in Woolbridge. I have never heard such singing. It speaks
to the heart with a directness …” His words failed him. He dropped his bracing arm to etch an expressive sweep with his hand.

“Can you sing?” asked Charles.

“I hum a little.”

Jarrett made an impatient sound.

“Sorry, cousin.” Favian resumed his pose. “I have set about a new work,” he went on, his eyes fixed dutifully forward, the rest of his face animated. “William Wordsworth speaks of his songs, but my desire is to write real songs—songs to rouse everyman's heart. A ballad, you see. I am working on a ballad …”

“A noble ambition,” Jarrett murmured absently, his mind still on the Bucket and Broom. The mystery visitors—they were likely to know something. A bearded man, smelling of sandalwood … He could hardly spend his time lurking in crowded places hoping to nose him out.

“What do you know of everyman's heart, young Grub?” demanded Charles. “
He's a dull and empty ass, who will not drain a foaming glass!”
he sang in a reasonably melodious baritone. “Now there's a song for you.”

“I am learning, cousin,” Favian said with dignity. “I have begun some acquaintance here among the weavers.
You
must know,” he appealed to Raif. “They tell me such things. In the old days the work was spread between the families but now the big manufacturers would have it all. Full-fashioned work at an old-fashioned price, that's all the weavers ask. There are rumors of machines. They say wherever the machines arrive the masters want more
for less. They will put all the small men out of work. It's happened other places. Something must be done. I tell them the independent men should form an association. If they combine together they can stand against Bedford and the rest.”

“Who's been telling you this?” demanded his lordship, half sitting up on his sofa. “Keep to your poetry if you must but don't meddle in such things. You know nothing of the matter!”

Favian's neat features took on a stubborn cast. He expected as much from Charles. Charles had everything his way and there was nothing he cared for so deeply as his own comfort. But cousin Raif was different. As an officer he had cared for his men—men of all degrees and none. He moved with ease in all companies and listened to what was said. Raif understood justice and had the strength of character to stand up for it. He focused his attention on the artist behind the canvas.

“What is your opinion, cousin? Should the weavers not have justice?”

Jarrett narrowed his eyes at the painted figure emerging from his canvas.

“I think any man must give his mind to consequences as well as action, Grub. With your connections you may kick a lieutenant with impunity—you may even set light to a warden's lodgings, but a man who does not share your privileges risks much more.”

“What can you mean?” Favian demanded. His face was burning.

Jarrett gave him a sober look. “You know what I mean. It's all very well to make friends among men of different degrees but you should never forget the responsibilities of your station.”

“My station!” Favian protested. Raif continued over him.

“You don't want your new friends to come to regret the acquaintance,” he finished dryly.

Favian swallowed hard. His throat felt stiff. Raif spoke as if he were an unruly puppy to be slapped down. He had always thought that they understood one another—that they shared a natural sympathy without elaboration or explanation.

Charles swung his boots to the floor.

“Grub used to be such a compliant little chap,” he mocked. He walked round to peer again at the canvas. “Don't you remember the way he used to follow us about with that trusting little face? Not a scrap of trouble—and now look at him!”

“You're in my light,” said Jarrett.

Favian moved his supporting hand and rolled his head to loosen his neck. Raif stood three-quarters turned to his canvas. The light from the window highlighted the athletic line of his body and the planes of his face. When Favian was a boy no tales thrilled him more than Raif's stories of soldiering. He used to spend hours dreaming of accompanying him on his adventures. Favian shrugged his shoulders to dispel the tension. He resumed his pose.

“You were at Walcheren, weren't you, cousin?” he asked.

“I was.”

“I have been longing to speak to you about how it was. Your experiences …”

The brown ochre flowed from his brush. For a moment Jarrett could feel the bark at his back. He saw himself once more under the tree where the officers hung their gear. He would write to the boy when he could, illustrating his letters with little sketches—the mule that fell through the roof of the barn; the fat sergeant losing his boot in the bog. As if telling amusing tales of soldiering to a sick boy who rarely left his room was proof of his own humanity. A preservative against the suspicion that the savagery, the burned villages, the mud and the blood and the stench of death had made him a monster. The wash was threatening to flood the line. He caught it with his brush.

“Will you tell me about it? Walcheren, I mean.” The boy's voice was insistent.

“Very little to tell. Mosquitoes, marshes, boredom and men dying of fever.”

Favian thought of his verses. That was not how he imagined it. His cousin's tone was flat; a wall thrown up against further prying. The strokes of rough bristle caught against the weave of the canvas.

“But you came through all your campaigns. I think nothing can hurt you, cousin.”

Jarrett's eyes met his, startling in their intensity. There was a sadness there that chilled him. The connection broke.

“There was no glory in Walcheren, Grub.”

“But you were an honorable soldier.”

“I tried.”

“And you did your duty.” There was beauty in the exercise of duty—to protect and serve others.

“I hope so.”

“You did your duty for the good of others …” Favian forged on stubbornly. Raif made a derisive noise.

“Soldiering is about following orders, Grub. I followed orders and tried to keep my men alive. A contradictory pair of duties, as often as not,” he added.

Favian stared at him. Could the man he had once thought so admirable be merely ordinary?

“But why did you take to soldiering if not for honor or something fine?” he demanded indignantly.

Jarrett thought fleetingly of how he had sailed from England all those years ago. He was very young at the time; he probably had dreamt of a noble death in distant lands but now he was older he knew better. That youth had fled rather than face the dilemmas of his life. No honor there.

“So why?” Favian's voice was shrill. “Why did you soldier then—you must have thought you were good for something!”

It was not something he liked to speak about. Jarrett focused on the canvas before him.

“For necessity,” he replied casually. “The army would take me and a man has to eat.”

There, sitting in that sunny room, his body twisted in that tortuous pose, Favian Adley's idolatry shattered.
The scales fell from his eyes and Raif Jarrett stood before him a mere soldier; a fine physical specimen who took orders, risked his life and took others, so that he might eat.

“You would support the colonel,” he demanded, “a man you despise—even if he brings in soldiers to crush local men, these weavers?”

Jarrett shot him a glance. He could see the boy was upset. Raif Jarrett had been raised by a proud English-woman who had spent many years in exile on the continent among foreigners. From childhood he had been schooled in the belief that British liberties, and the system of king and parliament that sustained them, were the envy of the world. Time had tempered his convictions but some residue remained. The boy had been out in the world so little, he thought sadly.

“If men don't break the law, the colonel can do nothing—for all his wild suspicions,” he reassured him. “Ison cannot act alone.”

Favian snorted indignantly. “So you would do nothing!”

“I did not say that.”

“Then what?”

“You've barely arrived, Grub. You need to get a better sense of things.” Favian had turned pale. Jarrett thought he caught the glint of tears in his eyes. He smiled coaxingly at him. “Besides, any man of action should scout a problem thoroughly before he attacks it. Go in blind and you are likely to come to grief.”