The Chevalier Read online

  Conn said Grace, and they all sat down, and there was silence while everyone stifled the first desperate pangs of hunger. Then as they slowed down, there was conversation, largely about Betty's forthcoming wedding.

  ‘Will Turner is as good a soul as you would want to meet, and steady,' Bob told Matt. 'Betty met him at the midsummer fair last year, didn't you, Bet?' His sister nodded, eating steadily. 'They've been walking out ever since. He's twenty-nine, and he's got near on thirty-five pounds saved.' Bob looked to Matt for his amazed approval.

  Conn said quickly, 'That's all right, our Betty's got thirty pound saved up. She's a good match for him. She knows all about tending beasts, and she can spin and sew and bake and make cheese, and everything a man would want in a wife, and she's as strong as an ox.’

  Matt was calculating in his head while Conn spoke, and worked out that Betty must have saved two-thirds of her annual wage as dairy maid for the last twelve years to have thirty pounds saved up. Will Turner would have earned more as a horseman, but his saving was also impressive. He must indeed be a steady man, not given to drinking or tobacco, or the countryman's vice of gambling.

  Conn went on, 'They've found a cottage out at Dringhouses. It's only got an acre, but it's got good common rights. They'll have grazing on the moor, and on the champion once the crops are in, and they've right of cutting turf and furze and brushwood on the moor, and collecting acorns and lichens in the woods. With sixty-five pounds they can furnish the cottage, and buy some pigs and chickens and an in-calf heifer and maybe a couple of sheep. Betty can take in spinning, and Will can take in harness to mend - he's right handy with the needle and palm - and that will pay their rent. Oh, they'll be all right.’

  He smiled, vastly pleased with the prospect. He only hoped his little ones, if they survived, would do as well as his daughter.

  ‘Lucky for them they don't live down south,' Old Conn said, tearing bread with his sharp old fingers. 'There's precious few cottages down south. The great lords pull them down, so as to have common rights to themselves.'

  ‘Oh, you and your down south,' Ursula said in exasperation. 'Anyone would think you'd been to China and back the way you talk. We've all heard enough about your down south.' She glared at the old man, and he glared back, his little eyes bright with malice.

  ‘Woman, hold your tongue,' he said. 'I didn't live to my age to be snapped at by a viper of a woman who ought to know better than to speak at all. When I remember -'

  ‘Oh hush, Father, hush, Ursie,' Conn said anxiously, for Old Conn frequently compared Ursula unfavourably with her predecessor, and it made for unpleasantness in the house. 'Remember we've got a visitor.'

  ‘Aye, and he'll be our master one day,' Old Conn said, ‘and a good master at that, because he listens to the words of folk wiser than himself. There's some,' he added venomously, 'that never heed anyone, and clack like spoons in empty bowls instead of listening to good advice.’

  Ursula drew breath to retort, and Conn broke in quickly to prevent her. 'I know Betty would take it very kindly if you was to come to the wedding, Master Matt. There'll be good food and good ale and plenty of music.'

  ‘Why, thank you,' Matt said, delighted. 'I shall have to ask Uncle Clovis, but if he says I may, I shall certainly come.’

  *

  Clovis made no objection, and Matt, armed with a suitable bride-gift, went along on the day and enjoyed it more than anything he remembered. Betty looked almost handsome in her wedding finery, and was moved to tears by Matt's present, and thus rendered even more inarticulate than ever. Will Turner was a nice little brown nut of a man, smaller than Betty, and with legs already bowed from a lifetime of horses. He hadn't a tooth in his head, but his eyes were bright blue and merry, and his leathery hand shook Matt's warmly in a way that made Matt want to trust him.

  The feast was plentiful, and everyone ate until they ached, and drank so much that had they not danced it off, they would all have been incapable long before the end. Matt took along his father's bassoon, and won everyone's approval by playing some merry measures for the dancing, and all the favourite songs for singing while they rested between dances. It was very late when he was fetched home by a faintly disapproving servant, and he was so tired by then that he had to concentrate on not falling off his pony. He thought all the way home about Betty and Will in their new home, wondering how things would go for them, and hoping they would have good health and good fortune, and that not too many of their children would die. He wondered again about his own marriage, and longed to be bringing Mavis D'Atheson home, as Will was now bringing his Betty. When I marry, he thought, I want the wedding to be just like that one.

  *

  It was only a few days later that Matt learnt through a servant that Bob had died. He had been cheerful at the wedding, though obviously very sick, and he had not been able to dance, but had sat in a corner with his foot propped up on a stool and protected by a basket, for anyone brushing against it made him almost faint with pain. Matt had thought his flushed face and glazed eyes had been due to good ale, for he had spoken cheerfully to Matt when he passed by; but it must have been the wound fever after all.

  Matt was greatly saddened, for he had known Bob since he was very small, and had been fond of the man, as of an older brother. Davey had been absent from school all this while, and when Matt was finally able to go over to the cottage to pay his respects, Davey told him that he would not be coming back to school again.

  ‘But why?' Matt asked, aghast. Davey gave him a significant glance, and led him outside to the privacy of the cattle-trough to talk.

  ‘My stepmother's doing,' he said abruptly. 'She says it's nonsense to keep me at school, and that we can't afford it. If my father takes over Bob's beast-tending, there'll be less time for him to weave, and in any case, there's Bob's wages from his day-work to replace. She's another bairn on the way, and who knows when that will stop. She's young, she could have twenty years of child-bearing ahead of her.'

  ‘But Davey, what will you do?' Matt said.

  ‘I'm to stay here and tend the beasts, and take odd jobs when I can, until Lucy and Tom are old enough to mind the cows. That'll be two years, I suppose. Then I'm to go as a live-in servant on a farm, wherever a place can be found for me, and send my wages home for the family.’

  Matt stared, aghast. 'But Davey, you can't!' he cried. He knew what that kind of servitude meant. A live-in man on a farm that kept maybe only one man, a dairy maid, and a couple of small boys, would be old before he was twenty-five, for the long hours of gruelling work without respite and with no opportunities for rest or recreation were killing. And if he was sending home his wages, he would not even be able to save up, like Will Turner, for a place of his own. He would be chained to his servitude for life. 'You can't!' he cried again. Davey looked at him resentfully.

  ‘It's all very well for you to say I can't. I can't do otherwise. I have no choice in the matter. I'm not a lordly young master like you, with wealth and servants and a beautiful house.'

  ‘But you have such a good mind,' Matt said, ignoring the hostility in Davey's voice. 'You mustn't waste it.'

  ‘I don't have any choice. Besides, what use is a brain to me? You don't need to be able to read and write to herd cows or plough or dig turnips or stook hay. Education is wasted on the likes of me.'

  ‘But Davey -' Matt began, and now his friend turned on him angrily.

  ‘Oh stop but-Daveying me! What's it to you, anyway, Master? Why should you care whether I waste my brains or not?'

  ‘I'm your friend, Davey,' Matt said, hurt. Davey looked at him with cold and calculating eyes.

  ‘There's no friendship between the likes of me and the likes of you. That's for children. Well, you may be a child still, but I've had to grow up. I'm not your friend, I'm the son of your tenant, and I'll have to bow and knuckle my forehead to you for as long as we both live. And in a couple of years you'll order me whipped for insolence if I speak to you like this. It's time you grew up, Master M
att, and found friends from those of your own sort.’

  Matt stared at him in uncomprehending misery. It was the first time Davey had ever called him 'master'. They had gone to school together, sat at the same desk, done the same lessons, played together, snared rabbits and swum and run and got dirty together, bound each other's cut knees and shared each other's dinners, since Matt was five years old; and never in that time had Davey ever hinted that there was any difference between them. He did not know what to say, and in the end he could only turn away and walk blindly in the direction of home, breaking after a moment into a stumbling run.

  Davey watched him go, swallowing at the intolerable lump in his throat. A few tears broke past the rigid barriers he had put up, and he knuckled them away angrily. There was no time for such softness now. But he watched, all the same, until the slight, dark-haired figure of his friend - his true friend - had disappeared from sight beyond the line of thorns before turning with a sigh to go in.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Bluebird House was a very discreet place in a quiet street of Hanover, and Maurice and Karellie, having got good and drunk, had gone there without being able to remember who first suggested it, and had stayed there all night - or for as much of the night as was left. Now in the sober light of morning they had all got into one bed for company, and the two men were sitting up and talking while they waited for coffee to be brought them.

  Maurice had been chatting to his whore, who seemed to be passably interesting to him, and had a light of intelligence in her eye. Karellie's girl, who was lying on his chest with her arms wound round him, seemed less alert.

  ‘Why do you always get on so well with your girls?' Karellie asked crossly, as Maurice and his girl laughed heartily at something. 'All you seem to do is talk to them.'

  ‘Perhaps it's because I talk to them,' Maurice said genially. 'After all, this is business to them, so why should they enjoy it? A conversation must make a pleasant change.’

  Karellie heard this heresy with an open mouth. His companion yawned widely and smiled at him and said something which he didn't understand. 'Well,' he said, ‘even if I wanted to follow your example, I'd never make any sense of their terrible language. They sound like ducks quacking.'

  ‘I think she was swearing eternal love to you,' Maurice laughed, lifting an arm to accommodate his girl as she leaned across to talk to her partner in sin. In a moment the two girls were having a cosy conversation sotto voce, and Maurice sat up the straighter and said, 'Well, my dear, now you have been expelled from France, what are you going to do with yourself - apart from getting drunk and picking up doxies?'

  ‘I wasn't expelled from France, only from the army of France,' Karellie pointed out.

  ‘Same thing in your case, and Berwick's. It must have been hard for King Louis -'

  ‘Hard for him? How can you be so forgiving, when he has acknowledged the Usurper as King of England?'

  ‘My dear, he had to,' Maurice said. 'He was forced to make peace in Flanders, and the Usurper wouldn't miss an opportunity like that to make King Louis toe the line. You know the first draught of the Treaty of Ryswick insisted that he expell the whole royal family from France, but King Louis wouldn't have that.'

  ‘You seem to know all about it,' Karellie grumbled.

  ‘We aren't entirely cut off from the rest of the world at the Herrenhausen,' Maurice said sweetly. 'And in reason, Karel, if Louis recognized William as King, then it would be inappropriate to have the King's son and the King's cousin serving in his army, wouldn't it?'

  ‘If you say so,' Karellie said, unconvinced. Maurice smiled.

  ‘How disagreeable you are on waking, my brother. It must be the wine. You used to be so sunny-tempered when we drank only ale.' Karellie gave an unwilling smile. ‘That's better. So tell me of your friend Berwick. He married, didn't he? Does he love his wife? Are they happy?'

  ‘Oh yes, it seems so. He married Patrick Lichfield's widow, you know, and took on her son as well, but the boy adores him. They have one of their own now, as well. But Berwick is furious about having to leave the army. Neither of us could stomach sitting around at St Germain - it's so gloomy now - and in any case, there was no honour in being the mere pensioner of a pensioner of the King of France. The Prince of Conti offered Berwick his house down in Languedoc, and he took his family and went.'

  ‘But what will he do there?' Maurice asked.

  ‘Be a country gentleman, he says. But I can't see it. He'll get so bored.’

  There was a knock on the door, and it opened to admit two servants carrying wooden trays containing platters of fresh white bread, wooden cups, and a tall pot whose fragrance filled the room.

  ‘Ah, coffee!' Maurice cried, pushing his girl off his shoulder to free his hands. 'You know, when we were boys and Father St Maur used to tell us stories of ancient Greece and Rome, I used to think I had been born in the wrong age, and wish and wish I could have been a noble Roman. But that was before I discovered that they had no hot coffee in Rome.’

  When they were served, and the footmen had gone away, Maurice asked again, ‘So what are you going to do now?'

  ‘Find some other army to serve in. Soldiering seems to be all I'm fit for. And I like it. It's something to be done, that I can do well, and it's straightforward - no intrigues or doubts or puzzles. Just orders - a town to besiege, a wall to be sapped, a hill to be held, an enemy to be charged. Nothing one can't understand.'

  ‘Poor Karel,' Maurice said gently, 'you do find life a puzzle, don't you?'

  ‘Well, don't you?' Karellie said, turning his dark Palatine eyes to his brother.

  Maurice looked at him for a moment, and said, 'You know, even if our mother hadn't told us about her being Prince Rupert's daughter, I think I would have known sooner or later. Your eyes, for instance - and all of our mother's features - so like Aunt Sofie.'

  ‘You like Aunt Sofie, don't you?' Karellie said.

  Maurice smiled. 'I love her dearly. She is a sensitive, thinking woman and she surely does not belong here in this nest of boors - no, it's all right, neither of them speaks English. You know, Francesca Bard came here to visit a while ago - Dudley Bard's mother, Prince Rupert's mistress long ago - and Aunt Sofie took her in, and persuaded her to make her home here for good. Now there are many women in Aunt Sofie's position who would refuse to have someone like Francesca under their roof.'

  ‘So you are happy here?' Karellie asked.

  ‘Not entirely,' Maurice said. 'There are many things I don't like. I love Aunt Sofie, but there is no one else here in whom I have the least interest. The rest of the royal family are dull, and the heir apparent, George Lewis, positively unpleasant.' Maurice glanced at the girls to see they were busy with their bread and coffee and chatter, and said, 'You heard about the Konigsmark affair?'

  ‘Not in detail. There was some mystery -'

  ‘Mystery indeed. Konigsmark disappeared, and it seems certain that he was murdered, either by, or on the order of, the Elector or the Elector's son. George Lewis divorced his wife, as he had a perfect right to, although I don't believe for a moment that she actually did anything with the man. It was all just a game to her, poor silly child, but her behaviour was immoderate and people had been talking. But he not only divorced her, he also sent her away to be imprisoned in a big lonely house miles from anywhere, and he not only forbade her to see her children, he also forbade her to have any visitors at all. Now that was just plain spite. That poor creature, who lived for company and chatter.' Maurice shook his head. 'No, there are enough things here that I don't like to make it easy for me to leave.'

  ‘Are you leaving?' Karellie asked, surprised.

  ‘Soon. I don't know where I shall go, but I must go somewhere. Perhaps to Italy. Do you remember at St Germain, the Venetian ambassador, who said to me, "Young man, the soul of music is Italy, and the soul of Italy is Venice"?'

  ‘I remember,' Karellie said. 'And I said -'

  ‘You said that judging by his clothes and jewels and
servants, Venice was certainly the purse of Italy at the very least.’

  They both laughed, remembering.

  ‘We had some good times at St Germain,' Karellie said wistfully.

  Maurice said, 'Of course we did. Now tell me the latest news from there. How is our mother? And our little sister - what of her?' Karellie's expression was peculiar, and Maurice pursued, 'She must be growing beautiful now. At ten she is almost a woman.'

  ‘The King has certainly been impressed with her, though I think more by her learning and manners,' Karellie said evasively. 'He has asked our mother if she can be brought up in the royal nurseries as a companion to Prince James and the princess, and he has promised to make Aliena a maid of honour to the princess as soon as her household is formed.'

  ‘Well, that is good news. Our mother must be delighted.' ‘She is,' Karellie said shortly.

  ‘Though it will be lonely for her, not having Aliena with her. She has no one now. But tell me, you did not answer before, is Aliena beautiful?’

  Karellie turned troubled eyes on his brother. 'She's quite the most beautiful child I've ever seen. She's learned, and graceful, and accomplished. She sings like a bird, plays the virginals, rides like an Amazon, dances like a swan gliding about a lake, converses in Latin, speaks French and Italian so well you would think they were her own tongue - oh, there's no end to the list of her graces. And with all that, she's as modest and sweet as - oh, I don't know.'