The Flood-Tide (10 page)

‘Thank you, Duncan,' Henri said, lifting his chin for his cravat to be tied. The sounds of altercation came from the open window through which he had just departed. 'I think we had better put some distance between us and the scene, in case good Brouillard takes it into his head to come searching for us.'

‘Very good, sir,' Duncan said, and Henri clapped his shoulder consolingly.

‘Comfort yourself, my man, that I do not think I shall be able to go back there again.' Angry voices suddenly sounded in the street around the corner, and Henri grabbed his cloak hastily. ‘I shall go to Madame de Murphy's. You had better go and get yourself something to eat. Come for me there at dinner time.’

Madame de Murphy's house was in the Rue St Anne, not far from the Palais Royale, small but handsome, with a courtyard front and rear and lime trees growing around it. Her husband Meurice was a Colonel of the Royal Ecossais, whose forebears had gone into exile in the time of James II, and had added the ‘de' to their name long enough ago for Meurice to bear it comfortably. Madame was very rich in her own right, being the daughter of a silk merchant. On arriving at the house, Henri found a clutch of coaches standing in the courtyard and the road outside, and realized at once that Ismène was having one of her tiresome ‘salons'. He slipped quietly round to the back courtyard and up the servant's stair where he met Ismène's maid just coming out of her bedroom.

The girl stifled a squeak of alarm, and then laid a hand to her breast.

‘Oh m'sieur, how you startled me! I thought you were a robber.'

‘Do I look like a robber, Marie?' Henri asked, smiling as he slid an arm round Marie's pliant waist.

‘But yes, most like a robber,' she said, yielding with accustomed pleasure. He kissed her mouth, and the curving tops of her breasts.

‘Your mistress has company, I see.'

‘The usual ones, all come to talk, talk, talk. But I think they will not be long now. Will you not join them, m'sieur?'

‘No, Marie, I will not,' he said, allowing the hand at her waist to slip downward to her buttocks. ‘I will wait for Madame quietly in her room. That is why I came in the back way. Like you, my censorious little friend, I do not care for their talk, talk, talk.' He gave her one last hearty kiss and sent her away. ‘Tell Madame I am here when they have gone.’

When her guests had gone, and Madame de Murphy finally stepped through into her room, Henri was lying on her bed, one arm propped behind his head, peacefully smoking a cigar.

‘Faugh! Henri, what have you been doing? You smell dreadful,' she cried.

‘That is why I am smoking a cigar, my dear Ismène, to disguise the smell.'

‘Well, get off my bed at once. How should I explain such a smell to Meurice?'

‘The smell is only on my clothes. If I take them off—'

‘Definitely not, Henri. Come into the other room and have some coffee, and be civilized.' She swung on her heel and went back into her drawing room, and Henri smiled and got up and sauntered after her.

‘You are loveliest when you scold me, Ismène,' he said.

He came up behind her and kissed the nape of her neck, but she shook him away and asked sharply, ‘So why do you smell so abominably of fish?'

‘I was in bed with a fishmonger's wife, and had to leave through the window. I threw my clothes out first, and they landed in - something.’

She looked at him scornfully, her eyes spitting anger. ‘Why do you do such things? The wives of bourgeois, indeed! Why must you go to bed with women whose husbands object? Are there not enough with complacent husbands?'

‘For the same reason that you mix with those dreadful friends of yours who have just left,' he said serenely, ‘because it amuses me.'

‘They are not dreadful, they are very clever people, who say very clever things.'

‘None of them has an original thought, Ismène, and you know it. They quote from books all the time.' He walked to the table and picked up the books that covered it and put them down again contemptuously. 'Look at them! Corneille, Plutarch, Cicero - and this, the worst of all -Rousseau!'

‘I forbid you to speak a word about Rousseau,' Ismène snapped, setting down the coffee pot so hastily she almost broke it. 'I will not have his noble works sullied by your wicked tongue.’

Henri crowed with laughter. 'Noble! The bilious outpourings of an impotent adolescent, hovering on the edge of—'

‘Henri, be silent!' She stood up, quivering with rage. ‘Be silent or I shall strike you.'

‘Listen to this, for instance,' he went on, watching her from the corner of his eye as he picked up a book of Rousseau's and opened it at random. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in irons." How stirring! How noble! And how completely untrue! Man is born in the most abject of dependence, unable even to control his own bowels, and is in feoff to anyone who will feed and house him until at least his tenth year. But the untruth of the statement will not deter Rousseau, or his ardent followers, will it?’

He had his wish. She flew at him like a wildcat, and he dropped the book, laughing, and caught her wrists, and wrestled with her until he had her arms pinned behind her back and her body pressed against his.

‘You are irresistible when you forget your dignity and show your claws,' he murmured, kissing her lips until they softened and he saw the ferocity in her eyes replaced by that thrilling look of languor. Her body ceased to resist him and began to press against him avidly, and in spite of his exertions with Madame Brouillard, he felt his own reaction rousing in him. 'I do think I had better get out of these clothes, don't you?'

‘Damn you, Henri,' Ismène murmured between kisses. He released her arms, and she took his hand and led him into the inner chamber.

Later, when they were lying in each other's arms, happy, flushed, and satisfied, Ismène reproached him again, but affectionately.

‘Really, Henri, why do you go with such dreadful people? What possible amusement it can be to you completely escapes me.'

‘But I feel just the same way about your salons,' Henri said equably. 'All your earnest young men, with the down barely grown upon their cheeks, swapping a stale mash of undigested, half-chewed, whimsical ideas—'

‘But you do not know!' she sat up as she grew animated. ‘We talk about so many things - not just the works of those authors you despise, but about important things—'

‘What important things?' he said cynically.

‘The way the country should be governed, and the nature of Man, and Freedom—' Henri caught her in his arms and pulled her mouth down to his in a kiss that stopped the list.

‘
That
is the nature of man. It takes more than good intentions and the conversation of ardent young men to change man's nature for very long. And as for freedom -it is just a word. A very dangerous word, it is true, for it has a thrilling, ringing sound that fires the heart. You expect somehow that at the very sound of it all walls will fall flat and all doors fly open. Beware of thrilling words, my Ismène, like freedom and truth. The first thing they do is kill somebody.'

‘Then how would you have us live?' she said crossly, pouting a little. 'Like beasts? We must search for the truth.'

‘This is the truth, my darling,' he smiled, 'that my hand fits your naked breast as a nest fits a bird. And that your tongue tastes of honey and apples—' a long silence, 'and that it is time I got up and got dressed, before your husband, my friend, comes home.'

‘Oh, Meurice will not dine at home today,' she murmured, the languid look returning to her eyes. 'We have plenty of time.’

*

The
Ariadne
was somewhere in the Mediterranean in October 1774 when Flora gave birth to a daugher at Morland Place. Her brother Charles was there, however, and he persuaded Flora that Thomas would be pleased if the child were named Louisa after their dead sister. It had not been a difficult birth, and Flora was soon up and about again. The baby was sent to be suckled by the shepherd's wife who had also suckled little James, and was the only wet-nurse Alison would trust.

‘She'll look after your little one all right, don't you worry,' she told Flora, dosing her with periwinkle to stop her milk. 'She'll bring her up to the house every day, so you'll see she's well, and as soon as she's got the little lamb weaned onto ewe's milk, we shall have her back here in the nursery.’

Flora, too preoccupied with the pain of her breasts to care much about the baby, only wondered a little whether it might not be better to give her milk to her baby than to try to send it back whence it came with tight bindings. Alison looked shocked.

‘And spoil your pretty figure? What an idea! You'll thank me in years to come, when you've still a figure like a lady, instead of like a cottager's wife. I know it frets you now, child,' she added more kindly, 'but the periwinkle will soon stop that. In a week's time you'll have forgotten you ever had a baby.’

And true enough, in a week's time she came down from her chamber to re-enter the world, and was happy to forget her confinement, which seemed like a strange dream, and interest herself in the affairs of the family.

Charlotte was excited about her new horse, Sorrell, which Allen was afraid was too much for her, though Jemima was sure she'd manage it in the end. Allen was preoccupied with the election, which had given Lord North and the Government a majority, on account of the low level of land tax which had made it popular. Jemima was worried about the price their cloth had fetched last week, and because Allen had to go to London to consult the College of Arms about their coat of arms.

‘We have to get special permission, you see, for Edward to display the Morland arms in the first quarter when he inherits,' Allen explained to Flora. 'Normally he would show my arms in the first quarter, and the Morland, Moubray and Neville arms in the other three, in that order. But as the Morland estate is far the most important, and he is taking the Morland name too, it would seem more appropriate—'

‘But I just wish you could write, and not have to go yourself,' Jemima said plaintively. 'I've only just got used to having you back.' He smiled indulgently and patted her arm.

‘I shall be gone only a fortnight, dearest. I shall have to be back for the assizes in any case.’

William, Flora found, was most interested in a letter from Edward, now in his second half at Eton, which was so much more full of interesting detail than his letters during his first half had been. Charles had been excited that the sweet gum tree he had brought back from America had not only survived its first year in the American Garden, but was displaying the beautiful autumn foliage for which it was prized, and had provided sufficient seeds for him to begin cultivating them for sale. But on the day Flora came downstairs he received a letter from Philippe de Courcey, which was an event to eclipse even a prize tree in his mind.

The situation in America was so little generally discussed in England that it was largely from Philippe that Charles had learnt of the measures taken since the Boston 'tea party' incident, though Allen took a mild interest in it for his sake, and passed on tidbits he gathered from his brother-in-law Chelmsford. The Port Act had closed Boston harbour to all trade, which should have been a severe blow to colonial trade in New England; while the Massachusetts Government Act abolished the locally elected Council of Massachusetts and replaced it by one nominated by the Crown. In June the Quartering Act had allowed the billeting of troops away from barracks, in barns or uninhabited houses, thus allowing them to be spread more effectively. But by far the most unpopular act with the colonists was the Quebec Act. The government had hoped that this Act would 'settle' and 'anglicize' the northern province of Canada, but it had not.

‘I believe the act intended to be fair to the settlers in Canada, rather than unfair to the rest of America,' Philippe had written, 'but our neighbours do not see it that way. Most of all they object to the clause that gives religious freedom to Roman Catholics in Canada. Naturally
we
rejoice at that, but the Protestants, particularly in New England, claim that the British Government is a convert to Rome, and that the Act is the first step in crushing their religion and imposing Popery over the whole country. I shall never understand this hysterical fear of Catholicism. We have been in fear of reprisals but apart from some offensive drawings sent to us anonymously there has been nothing. Tempers grow cooler the further south you go.’

That had been written in July, and Charles had been anxious to hear that no harm had come to them. Philippe's October letter spoke of the Continental Congress which had opened in Philadelphia in September.

‘Representatives were sent from all the colonies except Georgia, and the meetings so far have been very calm and moderate. They are trying to discover ways of restoring harmony between ourselves and the Government, and the Government seems not to have objected - at least, the Congress has not been banned.’

A little further down in the letter, Philippe broke off an account of local affairs to add, 'I have just heard more of the Continental Congress, which is still sitting. I am afraid it is not good news. It seems a rumour reached the Congress that General Gage had blown up Boston Town, which though proved false was readily believed in Philadelphia. The Congress has resolved to ban all imports from and exports to England. The import ban is to operate from December the first; the export ban, on account of the hardship it would cause the southern colonies, is not to come in until September next year. Whether it will have the effect on England that the Congress hopes for, I cannot guess. But I am sure that it will make relationships more strained than ever between America and England. A war between our countries is unthinkable, and yet our differences seem to be irreconcilable. How I wish you could have visited us this summer, as we hoped - it would have been such a comfort to us both. Write soon, and let us know what is being said in England, and if anything is being planned, give us due notice. I worry more for Eugenie's sake than my own.’