Most Secret (15 page)

“Insulted?” repeated Dolly, sitting up straight with the tears running down her face. “You are not displeasing to me; I own this; wherefore, if I am honest, should I have cause to feel myself insulted? And yet I think I could kill you. Why, why, must you make a noise and interfere?”

“He struck you!”

“Ever since I can remember,” Dolly said in her beautiful voice, “somebody or other has been a-striking me and a-walloping me. And a-calling me fool and strumpet and much else I must seem and perhaps am. But why, why must you cry your challenge to Pem, when I had all but wormed from him enough information to give the king?”

“When you had wormed from him,” yelled a thunderstruck Kinsmere, “enough information to give
whom
?”

“The king, strike me dead of a pox, who else? ’Twas His Majesty set me on Pem, to trap him if I could. Sure you guessed I was leading him on? I had no notion ’twas so big a plot as it’s like to prove; I
am
afeared, though not for the reason I said. I know Pem suffered no hurt, save for a certain mishap we won’t discuss; could I not hear you and Mr. Bygones talking through the wall? I know you burned that paper writ by Aub Fairchild; and truly, truly I am grateful. But was it of such very needful help?”

“Madam, for God’s sake—”

“No matter what I had done, the king said, he would pardon me could I but even in part confirm his suspiciousness of Pem Harker. Come!” said Dolly, with a little smile flashing through tears. “You are
not
displeasing to me. Sit down, dear boy; we’ll hold soft discourse of other things. And yet, notwithstanding that at one moment I could have killed you for your interference, perhaps I am not truly sorry after all.”

Kinsmere said nothing. He bowed to her, almost reverently, and sat down.

“Le Roi de la Grande Bretagne a une manière si cachée et si difficile à pénétrer que les plus habiles y sont trompés.”

Ambassador Barillon to King Louis XIV

T
HERE HAD BEEN A
deal of talk, and even some little action, before the bells of the City clocks struck two. While Kinsmere was still pondering the relation of Dolly Landis, Mistress Dolly discovered the wound in his left shoulder, and “Eee’d!!” in a most hair-raising way.

The wound was actually of small consequence. Harker’s point had nipped through some loose flesh at the top of the shoulder blade; beyond a slight stiffness for a day or two, there could be no ill effects. But there was a fair amount of blood, which enables us to persuade the ladies that death may be imminent. And so my grandfather fetched up a dismal groan or two, rolled his eyes glassily, and felt not displeased at all.

She was in a passion of concern, was Dolly. From the table she took a large pewter soup tureen and emptied its cold contents out the window, to the audible dissatisfaction of some gentleman passing in the alley below. Then Dolly took the gallon jug of boiling water she had bespoke from a tapster; she flung half the boiling water out the window, by way of reply; and this time the unseen gentleman stood and passionately addressed the window for some minutes.

Under the blue-and-orange gown Dolly wore an astonishing number of petticoats. From the topmost one she tore strip after strip, turning round and round like a cat chasing its tail. Having thus obtained clean bandages, and a quantity of lukewarm water by mixing boiling with cold in the soup tureen, she proceeded to bathe and dress Kinsmere’s wound. Dolly’s nearness as she bent over him had an irresistible effect. Once the bandage had been adjusted, and his shirt and coat put on again, he could contain himself no longer. He rose to his feet, took the girl in his arms, and kissed her at some length.

Again, young ladies and gentlemen, I perceive your shocked expressions. For this is the Year of Grace eighteen hundred and fifteen. Pious old King George the Third, however mad and blind he may be, is still alive. But our true ruler is His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, whom I once saw at a prizefight when he was still a youth and I the mature colonel of my regiment. And I am sure that the Regent would be in no sense shocked. He is recorded as having remarked that King Charles the Second was the only one of his predecessors whose company he could have tolerated as a gentleman.

But I was telling you how Rowdy Kinsmere, on that May afternoon of the year sixteen-seventy, for the first time kissed Dolly Landis. Nor did Dolly herself display the least coyness or reluctance, clasping him tightly round the neck and furthering the process with her tongue after a fashion of which you, young ladies, will doubtless hear when you are a little older.

They were in this position when Bygones Abraham walked into the Cupid Room.

“Well, strike me blind!” roared Bygones, stopping short.

“Sir and madam,” says the exalted Kinsmere, “it seems necessary that we drink.”

“Can ye spare the time?” says Bygones. “It would grieve me to interrupt a teet-ah-teet merely with mention o’ something relevant. Howsobeit! I have tied Harker securely, with my sash round his head by way of a gag, and shut him in the cupboard with the door latched. He’ll be tractable, we can warrant, for lack of the power to be anything else.”

Whereupon Kinsmere bethought himself of what Dolly had told him. He went on to inform Bygones, who at first refused to believe it.

“Have a care, lass, if this is more deceit! Deceive Pem Harker all you like; but if you’d deceive us too …”

“ ’Tis no deceit, I do solemnly swear! You are an ugly old cat o’mountain. Yet I like you; I would not deceive you. And could I dream of deceiving this boy here?”

(‘Boy, damme? Now who are you calling a boy?’)

“Indeed,” confessed Dolly, shivering all over, “I was sore perplexed and afeared as to how I
should
proceed. Knowing, as I did, there was some person listening at that knothole …”

“You knew that too?”

“For sure I did! But who was the watcher? And was it a spy on
me?
And who sent him to spy there? Was he put there by … by …?”

“By the king, would you say? Oh, body o’ Pilate! D’ye fancy the king (God bless him) would set a spy to observe the postures of his own spy?”

“I don’t know and can’t say. I am not so familiar as some people with the ways of conspirators. And yet, having been acquainted with His Majesty some matter of a month or six weeks, I vow I think he might do
anything.
Nor was it an easy task I had. When Pem ceased speaking so much treason, I must prod him on again by making mock of the king as an idle good-for-nothing.”

“Which we know he is not.”

“Oh, sir, I greatly fear he is not!”

“You fear it?”

“Ay, truly I fear it!” Dolly answered. “He is much given to idling and laziness, as which of us is not? He loves the sins of the flesh, as which of us does not with the right person for company? But he is endowed with so great a crowning of brains that ’tis frightening and not sootheful.”

“You yourself, lass, are not altogether lacking in
that
respect. How much have you learned of this conspiracy at the palace? Of the band o’ malcontents and their plotter-in-chief?”

“Only what Pem boasted of. And some few hints from His Majesty’s self, which did but mislead me. What else
should
I know?”

“Come, Madam Landis! Are you a loyal king’s man?”

“Oh, I am! Pray believe I am!”

“Why, then,” said Bygones, uprearing in eloquence, “I’ll tell you what it is and must be. We will form, here and now, a defensive band o’ counterconspirators. We will exchange bits and pieces of guess or knowledge, like three more deities on this Olympus at the Devil. We will command dinner at long last, and take a deep cup or two to drink our own prosperity. Hey?”

“Oh, this is lovely; this is most pleasant!” Dolly beamed at him. “I am ripe for a drinking set, or carouse if it must be. But be sure we don’t o’erdo it. Pack me off to the theatre by four o’clock, I implore you, and sober enough to play.”

Afterwards they had fine memories of that little hour or more in the Cupid Room: partly because they got on so well together and partly because Bygones poured wine with a liberal hand. (He and Kinsmere drank claret; Dolly drank champagne.) In a niche over the chimneypiece stood a small figure of Cupid, painted pink as the bust of Apollo downstairs was painted blue. Beyond open windows, beyond the alley, lay the romantic garden of Serjeants’ Inn. It is true that every fresh breeze sent in neighbouring chimney smoke like somebody making a skilful stroke at billiards, that flies buzzed round the food and that a hitherto sunny day began to grow overcast.

But, so far as my grandfather was concerned, it could be called idyllic. Up had been ordered a comfortable meal, which commenced with a roast calf’s head and a couple of geese, and ended with a large Cheshire cheese. Though in Dolly’s presence Kinsmere had believed himself no longer hungry, yet he was constrained to partake of most courses and to finish at least one grilled fowl down to the bones.

It was pleasanter still to sit at table beside Dolly, observing how the brown eyes would constantly return to him as she ate or drank. She was telling them something of her history; nor did she speak solemnly in the telling, since Dolly was always inclined to laugh at herself rather than to laugh at anyone else.

She told them of her late home in Coal Yard, Drury Lane; of her late mother, who had been a kind-hearted soul and a good enough mother in all conscience, except when she belted Dolly because there was no money to buy drink, or else had the horrors from too much drink and chased everybody in sight with a manure fork. A drunken cobbler taught Dolly to read and write. The identity of her father she never learned. There had been several brothers and sisters, so far as she could remember; but all these had died naturally or been killed somehow: according to the fate, Dolly said, which usually overtakes such.

Of her apprenticeship as table servant at the brothel—Mother Fenniman’s handsome establishment in Red Lion Fields—she made good comedy. As for her second apprenticeship, an orange wench at the theatre, she did not slur over the fact that she had picked the pocket of Sir Aubrey Fairchild. Orange wenches for the play, either under Killigrew at the King’s House or the late Sir William Davenant at the Duke’s, received pay too wretched to live without other means. There were always men to get money from; and yet Dolly, though she made no pretence at being better than others, would not go with a man unless she was fond of him. It seemed the more ironic that somebody like Harker, of all people, should fasten on her with his grisly threat of the gallows, and should hold that threat for nearly three mortal years.

“Until
you
met him and beat him! And, oh, I am so very happy!”

“The plain fact, madam, is that I did NOT beat him. ’Twas the merest accident, sweet heart, as you are well aware. Also, to speak a truth, I was somewhat frightened of the fellow.”

“Oh, be bothered!” cried Dolly, or words something like it. “Did you fight him, dear boy, or did you not?”

Clang
smote the great bell at the Church of St Dunstan-in-the-West, clearly heard from Fleet Street on the opposite side; it went on to strike two.

Bygones Abraham, who had been stuffing himself until his face assumed richer purplish-red hues than ever, here settled back with a look of drowsy comfort. A moment later he leaned forward, poured out and disposed of two tankards in rapid succession, hiccupped, patted his stomach, and settled back again with an expiring sigh. As he watched Kinsmere and Dolly lean towards each other, their fingers touching as though reluctantly, a watery and sentimental light began to grow in his eye.

“It was ‘way far and gone’ in forty-three—!” Bygones said, so abruptly that the others jumped.

“What was?”

“Ay!” muttered Bygones, in a sepulchral voice like a prophet. “There were men in those days, lad! Men, I tell ye!” He contemplated the wine bottles in a gloomy and mysterious way. “Tempoura mewtanter, ate nose some-thing-or-other in illus! Faith was stronger, causes were spiritualler, a more noble scale struck a chord in the forefront of human existence. A good backsword at your hip in a cavalry charge, taking care the grip don’t turn in your hand when you rise in stirrup to hit ’em; and skill in all the arts and diplomatic tongues of this earth.—What is Love?” inquired Bygones, changing the subject.

“Come, here’s d-drollery!” chortled Dolly, and lifted her glass once more. “The talkative gentleman, I do protest, is grown most remarkably drunk.”

Both to Dolly and to Kinsmere this notion seemed so extraordinarily funny that they leaned towards each other and roared. But the old soldier would have none of it.

“ ’Tis rank slander!” he declared. “Bygones Abraham, pride of the cavalry, become foxed on a few pints of claret? Zhommy duh lah vee! It’s a habit o’ mine, when much discourse must be spoke on weighty matters, to oil the muscles of my eloquence with some choice words beforehand. Have you never seen runners before a race? Springing up and down in such fashion, freely unlimbering ’emselves?”

“And an excellent habit I pronounce it!” said Kinsmere. “The question before us, good friends,” he continued, with some recollection of his uncle Godfrey, “hath been propounded as ‘What is Love?’” He looked sideways at Dolly, his head spinning. “Love, good friends, may be described as—”

“I am already unlimbered,” Bygones cut him off. “Nay! Zoot ellers! Assay duh saw! And as for
you,
lass!” Indulgent yet judicial, Bygones also contemplated her. “What you say is of much interest, may be, but it’s not to our purpose. Let us hear instead of plots and counterplots: how you met the king, what he said to you, and what was determined thereon.”

“You’d hear it
all
?”

“I would,” said Bygones, with sudden grimness striking through, “and every word of it. Well?”

“Well!” replied Dolly. “It was about the beginning of April, I think, and at the theatre. I was Olivia in
The Mulberry Garden,
which they’d played two years before but were playing again.”

“Ay, lass?”

“There was a great throng in the pit, the middle and top galleries filled too, and all the court in the side boxes come to see us. The king was applauding hard, though ’tis no very comical play; and he was applauding
me,
though he’d not aforetime cast a glance in my direction.