Читать книгу Fallen Angels - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 13

It was the first time in three years that the fifth Earl of Lazen had left the Castle.

First he was carried downstairs by three footmen, then carefully placed on the cushioned seat of Lazen’s most comfortable travelling coach. He hated leaving his rooms. He hated outsiders to see his weakness.

He was sober this day. His face was pale and drawn, the face, Campion thought, of an old man. She was not going with him, but as she watched the blankets being tucked about his thin body she thought how the raw, winter light made him look a score of years older than fifty. His manservant, Caleb Wright, climbed into the coach and the door was shut.

The Earl nodded to Wright, who rapped on the coach roof, and then the Earl grimaced as the coach jolted forward. Even small movements gave him pain, yet he had insisted on going out this day.

There was not, after all, far to go.

The coach went down the driveway, through the huge gates with their stone carved escutcheons that showed the bloodied lance of Lazen on either post, past the gatehouses that curved forward in elegant wings, and then slewed right on the cobbles of the market place to take the Shaftesbury road.

Lord Culloden rode beside the coach. His face looked grim and wintry, suitable for this occasion.

Simon Burroughs, Lazen’s chief coachman, had brought extra horses and, when they reached the field at the bottom of Two Gallows Hill, they were harnessed to the six already pulling the coach so that the great vehicle could be hauled to the summit of the hill.

Waiting at the hilltop, as the coach heaved and jolted upwards, was a common cart. It stood close to the pitch-painted gallows that leaned eastwards towards the town.

A small group of men stood about the cart. They were cold. The Castle lay like a great stone monument in the valley beneath them. The smoke from its scores of chimneys drifted flatly over the winter-hard land.

The coach, creaking and swaying, reached the gentler slope at the hill’s top. The men standing about the cart pulled off their hats as the door was swung open. They could see the white face of the sick Earl staring from his seat. He raised a hand in acknowledgement of their muttered greetings.

The door had been opened so he could see what was about to happen.

Lord Culloden dismounted. ‘You’re ready, my Lord?’

‘I am.’ There was a grim pleasure in the Earl’s voice.

The turf about the gallows was worn thin. To the south Lord Culloden could see the heathland where he had rescued Campion. The sky above was grey and white. He nodded to the waiting, cold men about the cart. ‘Do your duty!’

The body of the man who had attacked the Lady Campion Lazender had been fetched from the heath. It had been stripped naked, then bound in a net of chains. The links jingled cheerfully as the men hauled the body off the cart, as it thumped on the ground, as they dragged it by the feet to the gallows.

The Earl watched.

The ladder had been forgotten, but one of the small boys who had come to watch shinned the upright and sat astride the crossbeam. A rope was thrown to him that he threaded through the rusted iron ring that was bolted to the beam. The lad stayed there.

They tied the rope to the chains at the nape of the dead man’s neck, then hauled him up so that he hung like a misshapen sack. He would rot now, the chains holding his decomposing flesh as the birds tore at him. By winter’s end he would be nothing but bones in rusted chain.

The Earl watched with grim satisfaction. It was a pity he could not have hanged the bastard alive, but he would hang him dead and in a place where, each dawn, the body could be seen from the Lazen valley; a warning to others who dared attack his family.

The small boy, while the men supported the weight of the dead man, tied the rope at the ring iron. The men let the body hang. It turned slowly, the head slumped down on the chains about the half cut neck. Lord Culloden stood back, touched his blond moustache, and looked at the Earl through the open carriage door. ‘May God damn his soul, my Lord.’

‘God can have his soul,’ the Earl said, ‘but I’ll have his bones. I’ll grind them for the pigs.’ He grimaced in pain. ‘Give the men their cash, my Lord, and add a half guinea for that lad! Then home!’

Campion, watching from the Long Gallery, saw the dark speck hanging on the skyline. Beside her, Mrs Hutchinson, her companion and chaperone, frowned. ‘Hanging’s too good for him, dear.’

Campion smiled at the old woman. ‘Where he’s gone, Mary, he’s suffering far worse.’

‘I hope so, dear, I hope so. You know me, I’m not vengeful, but I’d have torn his heart out with my own hands! I would, too!’

Campion laughed. ‘You can’t kill a moth!’

Mrs Hutchinson tried to look fierce and failed hopelessly. ‘Well at least Lord Culloden is staying on! I thank the good Lord for him, dear, truly I do.’

Campion looked at the old lady and smiled. ‘So do I.’

‘And you’ll pardon me for saying it, dear, but it is nice to have a gentleman about the house again! It’s been too long! Entirely too long.’

‘It has, Mary, it has.’ Campion smiled, and there came, inevitably and annoyingly, a sudden image of a black-haired man laughing with the small maid at the kitchen door, and she angrily thrust the image away. ‘I’m glad he’s staying.’ She made herself say it warmly, and she told herself, as she had told herself a dozen times since the awful attack on the heath road, that her meeting with Lewis Culloden was a miraculous providence of heaven. Lewis Culloden’s dramatic entry into her life had made her look up a half forgotten passage in Mr Burke’s book ‘Reflections on the French Revolution’, a passage which said that ‘the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.’ Mr Burke, she thought, was wrong. The age of chivalry had come with a bright sword and the hammer of hooves on the lonely road to the south. A maiden had been rescued, a villain hanged, and a lord had come to a castle. Chivalry, she tried to persuade herself, yet lived.

‘If they kill their King,’ Valentine Larke said, ‘we should turn Paris into a slaughterhouse. To do nothing is to condone the crime. We will have to fight!’

His companion laughed. ‘With what? We’ve reduced the army again!’ The Prime Minister believed that Britain would not need an army now that the French nation, as Burke had prophesied, promised to destroy themselves in blood and fire.

Larke said nothing. He was staring into the Westminster night, waiting for a cab or chair to come to the steps of Parliament. Sedan chairs, now that London was growing at such a rate to make their journeys impossibly laborious, were increasingly rare. Larke’s broad face looked grim in the light of the great lanterns. Sleet was falling on the cobbles.

His companion shivered within his greatcoat. ‘You’ll get your war, Larke, but the Prime Minister wishes you wouldn’t call for it quite so fiercely.’

Larke laughed. ‘I owe Pitt no favours.’

‘But he can do you some.’ His companion smiled. ‘You’re coming to White’s?’

‘No.’

‘Working again, my dear Larke?’

‘Working.’ At that moment the lanterns of a cab appeared and a linkboy ran forward with his flaming torch. Larke crammed his hat on his crinkly, black hair and nodded to his companion. ‘Mine, I think.’

Valentine Larke ran for the cab, climbed in, and shouted his destination to the driver. He could hear the sleet pattering on the tarpaulin that covered the driver’s knees.

Inside the vehicle he smiled. Again, in the candlelit chamber of the Commons, he had given a ringing call for war. He knew Britain was not ready for war, he knew that Pitt would do all he could to avoid war, so this was the perfect time to rattle the sabre and demand slaughter. Valentine Larke, Belial of the Fallen Ones, was establishing impeccable credentials as a man who hated the French and their damned revolution. He laughed aloud.

‘You said something, sir?’ the driver called out.

‘Damn your eyes! Just drive!’

The cab rattled behind its slow horse through the cold London night. Larke, sitting well back in the leather seat, saw the whores sheltering in the doorways, the drunks who would die in this cold, and the children sent out to beg while their mothers whored at home. Larke thought how much he loved this city. He knew it as a rat knows a dark, shadowed and foetid yard.

The cab stopped in one of the new streets of London’s west end. The houses were big, white stuccoed, with elegant iron railings supporting torches. He handed two coins to the driver and waited for the cab to go into the slanting, cold sleet.

He did not climb any of the elaborately porticoed steps. Instead he walked into a dark alley, unlit and stinking of urine. He lifted the skirt of his huge cloak as he walked, crossed a mews that was thick with the stench of horse manure, and then, stepping over a moaning drunk who reeked of gin, he entered another alley. He had a pistol in the pocket of his dark coat beneath the great cloak, but he walked without fear. This was his city. He moved through it with the skill of a hunter in a forest.

Music sounded ahead.

He could have ordered the cab driver to drop him at the glittering, impressive facade of the building that he approached, yet deviousness had become second nature to Valentine Larke. He approached the rear of the building, not because he came in secret, but because he always preferred the hidden approach. He was Belial.

The alley opened, under an archway, into a small brick-enclosed yard that was piled with scraps thrown from a busy kitchen. It was a foul place of rats and cats, a place where the sun would not enter except on a summer’s midday.

Three men were there. All were richly dressed. They wore no greatcoats or cloaks. Their coats were unbuttoned, showing frilled shirts and high silk stocks. The door at the top of the steps leading into the great house was open, letting a wash of yellow candlelight into the yard.

The three men, if they saw Larke, ignored him.

One of the three, a pugnacious, ugly man, was laughing as he tried to unbutton the flap of his breeches. The man belched, then finally succeeded in pulling the flap open. He held onto the wall. ‘Hitch her skirts up, Robin!’

An old woman, a drunkard, had come scavenging in the kitchen yard. She had either collapsed in gin-sodden unconsciousness, or else had been knocked down by the three young men who laughed at her helplessness.

‘Company!’ A tall young man whom Larke recognized as the Honourable Robin Ickfield drew the word out as if he was a drill sergeant. ‘Company! Fire!’

All three pissed on her, laughing loudly as she tried to drag herself out of the way.

Valentine Larke moved silently behind them and climbed the steps into the house. The young lordlings were at play and that was never a good time to disturb them. There were few things in life more dangerous than the idle, bored young men of London society.

Larke went into the house, through an antechamber, and then into the great, well-lit hallway into which the front-door of the house opened. A footman, hugely muscled beneath his elaborate uniform, started as Larke silently appeared from the back of the house, but then recognized him and relaxed. ‘Mr Larke, sir.’

While Larke was giving the man his cloak, hat and cane, a door to the left of the hall opened and a huge woman, middle aged and grotesque, came into sight.

She was dressed in lurid purple silk, her piled hair surmounted by a feather dyed the same colour. At her huge breasts hung a pendant of gold. She stopped when she saw Larke, sniffed, then nodded coldly. The feather quivered above her head. ‘Mr Larke, I see.’

He bowed to her. ‘Your servant, Ma’am.’

‘You’ll want food, I suppose,’ she said ungraciously.

‘Indeed, Ma’am.’

‘And no doubt you’ll settle the bill, Mr Larke?’ Her small eyes glared at him from the shapeless, pudgy face that seemed like a lump of dough piled haphazardly at the top of her massive cleavage. She seemed to have no neck at all. She jerked her monstrous head, making the pearls shake where they hung in her piled hair. ‘I am not a charity, Mr Larke.’

He smiled. ‘Indeed you are not, Mrs Pail.’

She sniffed and swept on, attended by two small footmen who fussed behind her like pageboys.

Her name was Abigail Pail, and these were her Rooms. Mrs Pail’s Rooms were famous in London, not just for the food, which was superb, or for the gaming, which was fast, but most of all for the girls, who were superb and fast. The ugliest woman in London ran the best whorehouse. It was here that the rich and the titled came to play, where their fortunes were lost, where their every need was attended to at a price that was extortionate.

The three men who had relieved themselves in the kitchen yard came noisily back into the hall. The pugnacious one, whose wigless black hair was cut short as a curry-brush, had vomit stains on his red silk coat. He saw Valentine Larke and laughed. ‘Christ! They let you come here?’

Larke smiled and bowed. Sir Julius Lazender, he thought, had one merit; consistency. He was offensive all of the time.

Sir Julius brushed rain off his coat. ‘Abigail lets you paw her girls, Larke?’

The Honourable Robin Ickfield snickered in a high voice. ‘I thought politicians preferred boys.’

‘You should bloody know, Robin,’ Sir Julius laughed. He belched drunkenly. ‘Christ! I could tup a bloody horse tonight.’ He pulled himself up the stairway, then turned with a malicious grin on his face. ‘You’ve come for the Countess, Larke?’ He said it accusingly.

‘The Countess, Sir Julius?’ Larke’s voice was unctuous.

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know!’ Sir Julius’s breeches flap was only half buttoned. ‘The old faggot’s got a French Countess here, Larke, but then I don’t suppose you can afford her, eh?’

‘She’s expensive, Sir Julius?’

Sir Julius laughed. ‘Five years ago the sniffy bitch wouldn’t look at you! Now her Ladyship will rub her tits on your arse for a shilling.’ He leered at Larke. ‘But only if you’re a gentleman.’ He turned away, pleased with his insult, followed by his companions.

Valentine Larke watched the three climb the stairs, his hard eyes showing no offence. Valentine Larke had not been born into the gentry, but if Sir Julius Lazender was a measure of gentility then Larke was glad he was no gentleman. Sir Julius, nephew to the Earl of Lazen, was a belligerent, drunken, pugnacious, rude wastrel. Larke smiled. Sir Julius would live to regret every sneer and every insult.

He turned towards the gaming room. The footman, who knew that Larke was neither a lord nor conspicuously rich, only opened one of the two leaves of the door.

He walked slowly through the lavishly appointed room, acknowledging the silent greetings of three of the players, and then climbed the far stairs that led to the dining room.

It was almost empty at this time of night. The waiters stood solemnly at the sides of the room watching the few patrons who remained. The food at Abigail’s was famous. Within an hour, Larke knew, the tables would be crowded with men from Parliament who saw no disgrace in eating their chops beneath Abigail’s bedrooms. One of the waiters hurried forward to usher Larke to a table, but Larke dismissed him. He walked the length of the room and through a door that would, by a short passage, bring him back to the main stairway which led to Abigail’s girls.

Another door, marked ‘Private’, led from the short passage. Larke paused, looked left and right, saw that no one was watching, and took from his waistcoat pocket a key. He fitted it into the keyhole, grunted as it turned reluctantly, and then, with a last look left and right, went into the room. He locked the door behind him.

He sat. On a table beside him was a tray with glasses. He poured himself some wine. A great book, bound in morocco leather, was beside the tray and, pulling the candelabra nearer to his chair, he opened the book on his lap.

‘Recorded. That Lady Delavele will drop Twins by Easter Day, between Mr Tyndall and Ld. Parrish. 200L.’

‘Recorded. That Ld. Saltash will Consume Bishop Wright’s Tomcat, prepared in Mrs Pail’s Kitchens, Entire. Between Ld. Saltash and Bishop Wright. 150L.’ Beside it was written. ‘Ld. Saltash the winner.’

‘Recorded. That Mr Calltire’s Bucentaurus will beat Sir Simon Stepney’s Ringneck, the owners up, between Tyburn and St Paul’s. The race to Commence at Midnight, Christmas Eve. Between the Owners. 2000L.’

‘Recorded. That Ld. Saltash will Consume Bishop Wright’s Marmalade Cat, Without Benefit of Onion Sauce, entire, prepared without Any Sauces or Gravies, in Mrs Pail’s Kitchens. Between Ld. Saltash and Bishop Wright. 300L.’

Valentine Larke smiled. The commission on wagers recorded in Mrs Pail’s book was twenty per cent. A key sounded in the lock of the door.

He looked up, his bland, flat eyes wary in the candlelight.

Mrs Pail herself stood in the doorway, her white, podgy face grim.

Larke stood. ‘Dear Mrs Pail.’

‘Mr Larke.’ She shut and locked the door, then turned and gave him a clumsy curtsey.

He smiled. ‘I find you well?’

‘Indeed, sir. Yourself?’

‘Never better, Mrs Pail.’ He put the book on the table. ‘Things seem to be flourishing?’

‘Flourishing they are, flourish they had better.’ She said it grimly, then smiled and bobbed her head as Larke poured her a glass of wine.

He raised his glass to her. ‘What’s this I hear about a French Countess in the house?’

‘Dear me!’ Mrs Pail gave a coy laugh. ‘A spinet maker’s daughter from Birmingham! Father was a rich man, raised her to speak French, but he’s bankrupt now.’ Mrs Pail shook her white, shapeless face. ‘Not the most beautiful of my girls, but I took her as a favour. She does well. She jabbers in French while they work. You’d like to see her?’

Larke smiled. ‘No. But a splendid idea to call her a Countess. I do congratulate you.’

Mrs Pail blushed with pleasure. ‘You’re too kind, sir, entirely too kind.’

‘Please sit, Mrs Pail.’

Valentine Larke was the sole owner of Mrs Pail’s Rooms, though only she, he, and a select few others knew it. He owned a dozen other such establishments in London, places where the gentry went to lose their money at cockfighting, cards, women, or prizefighting. He was insistent that, in public, she treated him as one of her less valued customers, such was his passion, his need for secrecy. He waited till she was seated, then sat himself. ‘I’m sorry to intrude on your evening with business, Mrs Pail.’

The doughy, powdered face screwed itself into a sympathetic smile. ‘It’s always a pleasure, Mr Larke.’

He smiled. ‘I won’t detain you long. I merely wish to know how much Sir Julius Lazender is in your debt.’

She thought for two seconds. ‘Not counting tonight, Mr Larke, nine thousand four hundred and twenty-two guineas.’

He raised his eyebrows. It was a huge sum, yet he did not look displeased. ‘You still lend him money?’

‘Of course, sir. You told me to.’

Larke nodded and sipped his wine.

Abigail Pail watched him without speaking. She did not know why her employer had instructed her to let Sir Julius Lazender run up such a vast debt. Sir Julius did it without difficulty. To Abigail Pail’s knowing mind Sir Julius Lazender was a brute, a brute with an appetite that drew him back night after night. He lost at the tables, he became drunk, and he went upstairs to the lavish, soft rooms and never was asked to pay a penny. Even his gambling debts were settled by the house. Sir Julius Lazender, on Valentine Larke’s specific instructions, had been given the freedom of London’s most exclusive and expensive whorehouse.

Larke knew that freedom should not end yet. His timing in this matter of Sir Julius had to be exquisitely right. He put his glass down, steepled his fingers, and smiled at the woman. ‘You will see Mr d’Arblay and instruct him, upon my authority, to prepare a summons for ten thousand guineas. But it is not to be served, you understand?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Nor is Sir Julius to know that the summons exists. He may continue to come here and you will continue to welcome him. If you need money then my bankers will, of course, oblige.’

‘You’re very kind, Mr Larke.’ The white, blubber face sniffed in disapproval.

Valentine Larke saw it and smiled. ‘Something troubles you, dear Mrs Pail?’

‘Not my position to be troubled, sir,’ she said in a tone that contradicted her words. ‘But he’s going to be the ruin of us!’

‘I assure you he is not.’ Larke smiled.

She chose to ignore his assurance. ‘Only this week, Mr Larke! He bit a girl! Horribly, Mr Larke! I can’t work a scarred girl!’

‘You put it on his bill?’

‘Of course.’

‘And the girl?’

Mrs Pail frowned. ‘I can’t put a girl on the streets just before Christmas, Mr Larke! It’s not Christian!’

‘Indeed not.’ He stood, to show that the interview was over. ‘Indeed you may keep her in the house, Mrs Pail, so long as you wish.’ He knew the loyalty that Abigail had to her girls. She educated those that could not read and always ensured that those who were not communicants in the Church of England learned their catechism and were confirmed by a bishop who was one of the house’s steadier patrons. By day the bishop conducted the girls towards heaven, and at night they returned the favour.

Larke bowed over her fat, ring-bright fingers. ‘I will stay a few moments.’

‘Of course, Mr Larke.’ She smiled archly. ‘You’d like company?’

He shook his head. ‘Thank you, but no.’

When she had gone, and when the door was locked, he took from his waistcoat pocket a message that had come to him at the House of Commons. He opened it, read it for the third time, then tossed it onto the grate that was piled with glowing coals. He watched the letter curl, burn, and break into wavering scraps of black ash.

Chemosh had not done what he had said he would do.

Larke stared into the fire.

Chemosh had promised that the girl would never marry because no man would marry her. She would be poxed and scarred, yet she was neither. She lived still with her beauty and her virginity. Chemosh had not done what he had promised he would do.

He put his head back, the corrugated black ridges of his hair crushed on Mrs Pail’s chairback, and he wondered when the Gypsy would next come. The Gypsy was the messenger who connected Larke and Marchenoir, carrying the coded letters that none but those two politicians could read. Larke hoped the Gypsy would come soon for he needed to pass on to Lucifer, by way of Marchenoir, the news of Chemosh. Lucifer would have to decide what was to be done. The timing of this thing was like the workings of a chronometer; gleaming, valuable, and exact. Chemosh was threatening to fail.

They dared not fail. Valentine Larke, staring into the fire, thought that they could not fail. Lord Werlatton was hunted by Moloch, Sir Julius by Belial, and the Lady Campion by Chemosh, and the joy of it was that not one of the victims knew of the hunters. He sipped his brandy and thought of Chemosh. The man had not done what he had promised, but he had not yet necessarily failed. Nor, Larke reflected grimly, would he fail. They were the Fallen Ones, and they did not fail.

Nor would he fail with Sir Julius. He smiled and took another sip of the wine. Sir Julius was baited and hooked, and Larke could reel him in whenever he wished. It could wait, he decided, till after Christmas, and then Belial would strike and the Fallen Ones would tighten the invisible ring that would choke the life from Lazen Castle. He smiled. He drank to the victory that would follow Christmas, to the victory that would lead the Fallen Ones to the Day of Lucifer and the fall of Lazen.

Uncle Achilles ran the blue ribbons through his fingers. ‘You’re going to wear these?’ His tone suggested that perhaps she should burn them instead.

‘I won’t wear anything if you stay here.’

‘My dear Campion, I am far too old to be excited by a woman getting dressed, let alone undressed. Besides, you forget that I’m still a priest. They never unfrocked me.’

‘And I’m not unfrocking while you’re here. Go away.’ She smiled at him and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘I’m glad you came.’

He smiled. ‘And glad that my mother didn’t?’

‘She would have been welcome.’

He laughed. ‘I like your Lord Culloden.’

‘He’s not mine.’

Mrs Hutchinson was laying out a dress of white crepe with Brussels lace at the neck and cuffs. Uncle Achilles looked at it where it lay on her bed and smiled. ‘A wedding dress?’

‘Go away.’

‘But I do like him, truly!’ Uncle Achilles took a pinch of snuff, crossed to her dressing table, and sat down. He opened a pot of rouge, dabbed a finger in it, and rubbed it experimentally on the back of his hand. ‘Not my colour.’

She crossed her arms. ‘I’m going to be late, uncle.’

It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, yet already Campion had ordered candles lit in her bedroom. It was gloomy outside, the sky grey and darkening over the Lazen valley. Uncle Achilles twisted on his chair and stared down at the townspeople who walked in excited groups towards the Castle’s entrance. ‘You English make a great fuss about Christmas.’

‘We don’t make any fuss at all. We simply have a good time. Those of us, that is, who are allowed to dress.’

He grinned at her. He was clothed, Campion thought, lasciviously; there was no other word. He had a suit of gold cloth, a new wig with silk tails, gold-buckled shoes of satin, stockings of white silk, and the faintest touch of cosmetics on his face. He saw her looking him up and down. His voice was teasingly anxious. ‘You think I’m presentable?’

‘You look wonderful. Just like a bishop.’

He laughed. He dipped her powder puff into the china bowl and brushed it against his hand. He held the hand out to the window and frowned critically. His nails were varnished. ‘In London they think I’m very elegant. But then I’m French which always impresses the English. They feel inferior to us for one very good reason.’

‘Because they are?’ She smiled. She thought how bored Achilles must be; an elegant, clever Frenchman only half employed in a strange country. He smiled at her. ‘Exactly, dear niece. You are so sensible for a mere woman.’ He crossed his legs, taking care not to crease his silk stockings. ‘The English have a sneaking suspicion that we know something about life and elegance and beauty that they do not know, and it is every Frenchman’s duty to continue the illusion. It is even, dear niece, the duty of someone like yourself who has the blessing of being half French.’ He smiled seraphically. ‘Has he asked you to marry yet?’

‘I haven’t known him five weeks yet!’

‘How proper you are, dear niece.’ He smiled and turned to the dressing table again. He dipped his finger into the cochineal ointment she would use on her lips and painted a heart on her mirror. He ignored her protests. He pierced the heart with an arrow. Above its fletches he wrote ‘CL’, by its point he wrote ‘LC’. He inspected his work. ‘There’s a certain symmetry to the two of you.’

Mrs Hutchinson, who had not understood a word of the French they had been speaking, understood the drawing. She laughed.

Campion, who was dressed only in a full length bed robe of coloured Peking silk, sat on the chaise longue. She smiled at her uncle. ‘You think the symmetry is important?’

‘I think it’s wonderful!’ He was fastidiously wiping his finger on one of her towels. ‘After all, lovers always seek fate’s happy signs. One says “I was born on a Monday” and the other says “and I also!”, and from that mere, unimportant coincidence they deduce that heaven has had a hand in their conjunction.’ He shrugged. ‘I think CL and LC come into that happy, heavenly category, don’t you?’

‘You want me to marry him?’

He smiled wickedly. He liked teasing her, not the least because she never took offence, however shocked she might be by his words. ‘Do you wish to marry him, dear Campion?’

‘What I wish, uncle, is to get dressed.’

He stood, bowed, and smiled again. ‘I retire defeated from the field. You will dance with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘If Lord Culloden will let you. Do you think he’s the jealous kind? Men with moustaches often are.’

‘Go away.’

He did, crossing in the doorway with Edna, Campion’s maid, who had fetched a bowl of warm water and hot towels.

It was Christmas Eve, the traditional day of celebration, the day when the town came to the Castle and the Castle provided bowls of frumenty and plates of pies and vats of punch and music from the gallery and fires in the great hearths and hogsheads of ale and puddings that had seeped their smell from one end of the huge building to the other and, as midnight drew near, great platters of roasted geese would bring cheers from the throng in the Great Hall.

A throng which expected the Lady Campion to marry. The word seemed to haunt the Castle. The rumour was like a whisper in every room, in every corridor, in every smiling face that greeted her. Lord Culloden had been in Lazen just a few weeks, yet all the Castle, all the estate, expected there would be a marriage.

Lord Culloden had said nothing. He was correct, polite, and charming, yet the mere fact of his presence fed the rumour that, before the leaves fell again, the Lady Campion would be wed.

She dressed with more care than usual.

Mrs Hutchinson cooed over her, patting the dress where it did not need adjusting, twitching hair that was like pale, shining gold. ‘You look a picture!’

‘I feel exhausted, Mary.’ Campion, as usual, had organized the day’s celebration.

Mrs Hutchinson smiled. ‘You look lovely, dear, quite lovely.’ What she meant, Campion knew, was that she looked lovely for him.

For whom, though?

For the Gypsy was also here.

She had seen him and the sight of him after so long was like an arrow thrust into the heart. She had thought she had forgotten him, she thought that the memory of that slim, dark, oddly blue-eyed face was just that, a memory. She had persuaded herself that her thoughts about the Gypsy were not about a real man, but about an idealized man, about a dream, and then she had seen his smiling, strong, competent face, and it seemed as if her heart stopped for that moment, there had been a surge of inexplicable, magic joy, and then she had turned abruptly away.

He had brought a letter from Toby. Toby was still in France, working for his mysterious master, Lord Paunceley. The letter asked her forgiveness that he could not be in Lazen this Christmas. Instead the Gypsy was in Lazen and on this night of Christmas Eve, just as at the old Roman feast of Saturnalia from which Christmas had sprung, the servants in Lazen would join the festivities with those they served. Tonight the Gypsy was her equal.

The blue ribbons were threaded into her sleeve so that, when she danced, they would hang and swirl.

About her neck were sapphires.

In her hair were pearls.

She stared at herself in the mirror. CL and LC.

Lord Culloden had come into her life in a blaze of heroism, in a manner of a Galahad or a Lancelot. He was tall, he was eager to please, and he was happy to make her happy.

She could not think of a single thing that she disliked about Lord Culloden, unless it was a slightly supercilious air towards his inferiors. She guessed the superciliousness came from his family’s lack of money, a fear that with a little more bad luck he would become like those he despised. On the other hand, as he became more comfortable with Lazen’s great wealth and privilege, he was displaying a dry and sometimes elegant wit. She smeared the red arrow with her finger and she thought that CL did not dislike LC. She might even like him very much, but there was the uncomfortable fact that when she saw him about the Castle she felt nothing. Or, at least, she did not feel the delicious, secret thrill that the Gypsy gave her.

She wished the Gypsy had not come. She stood. She stared for a moment at the grey, lowering clouds beyond her window. The hills across the valley looked cold, their crests twisting like agony to the winter sky. At the top of Two Gallows Hill, like a black sack, hung the man who had attacked her.

She shuddered, closed the curtains, and turned. Tonight there would be music and dancing, the sound of laughter in the Great Hall and flamelight on its panelling. Yet none of that, she knew, gave her the tremulous, lovely, guilty anticipation that sparkled in her eyes as she left the room. She had dressed with care, she had made herself beautiful, and, though she could not even admit it to herself, she had not done it for Lord Culloden. She walked towards the music.