Текст книги "Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon,Diana Gabaldon
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Chapter 35

“I Do Renounce Them”

Reginald Holmes, head steward of White’s Chocolate House, was spending a peaceful late evening in going over the members’ accounts in his office. He had just rung the bell for a waiter to bring him another whisky to facilitate this task when the sounds of an ungodly rumpus reached him from the public rooms below, shouts, cheers, and the noise of overturning furniture causing him to upset the ink.

“What’s going on now,for God’s sake?” he asked crossly, mopping at the puddle with his handkerchief as one of the waiters appeared in his doorway. “Do these men never sleep? Bring me a cloth, Bob, will you?”

“Yes, sir.” The waiter bowed respectfully. “The Duke of Pardloe has arrived, sir, with his brother. The duke’s respects, sir, and he would like you to come and witness the settling of a wager in the book.”

“The Duke of—” Holmes stood up, forgetting the ink on his sleeve. “And he wants to settle a wager?”

“Yes, sir. His Grace is verydrunk, sir,” the waiter added delicately. “And he’s brought a number of friends in a similar condition.”

“Yes, I hear.” Holmes stood for a moment, considering. Disjoint strains of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” reached him through the floor. He took up his accounts ledger and his quill, and turned to the page headed Earl of Melton.Drawing a neat line through this, he amended the heading to Duke of Pardloe,and with a flourish, inserted beneath it a new item reading, Breakages.

The singers had now reached the second verse and some semblance of unity.

“We won’t go home until mor-ning,

We won’t go home until mor-ning,

We won’t go home until mor-ning,

’Til day-light doth appear!”

“Fetch up a cask of the ’21 Santo Domingo,” Mr. Holmes instructed the waiter, writing busily. “I’ll put it on His Grace’s account.”

It was with an aching head and dark circles beneath his eyes, but impeccably attired in blue-striped silk and cambric ruffles, that Lord John Grey took his place by the baptismal font at St. James Church next day and received several yards of white satin and Mechlin lace, within which he was assured was his goddaughter, Lady Dorothea Jacqueline Benedicta Grey. Minnie had toyed with the notion of naming her daughter Prudence or Chastity, but Grey had dissuaded her, on the grounds that it was unfair to burden a child with such an onerous presumption of virtue.

The general, newly returned from the Indies, and Lady Stanley were there, standing close together, her hand upon his arm in a picture of the nicest marital affection. Grey smiled at his mother, who smiled back—and then stepped forward in alarm as the child wriggled in its wrappings and Grey momentarily lost his grip.

Snatching her granddaughter from destruction, Benedicta settled the christening robes more securely, and with a look of some reservation, handed the child back to her son.

Minnie, on the far side of the font, eyed him severely, but was occupied in restraining her own three sons, all of them decently silent, but wriggling like small satin-clad worms. Hal, beside her, appeared to have fallen asleep on his feet.

Mr. Gainsborough, the portrait artist who had been commissioned to commemorate the christening, skulked in the shadows, motioning to his assistant and squinting back and forth from his sketching pad to the scene before him. He caught Grey’s eye and motioned to him to lift his chin and turn toward the light.

Grey coughed politely and turned instead toward the priest, who was speaking to him.

“Dost thou renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desire of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led of them?”

“I do renounce them.” Minnie’s sister, the child’s godmother, stood beside him, and murmured the words with him.

“Dost thou believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth? And in Jesus Christ, His only-begotten son, our Lord? And that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; that He suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; that He went down into hell and also did rise again…”

Grey looked down into the sleeping face of innocence, and swore. He did not know if he might believe. But for her, he would try.

Following the christening, the family rattled home by coach to the Grey manor on the edge of Hyde Park. The trees were in their autumn glory, their falling leaves borne on the wind, and bits of red and gold and brown flew up in showers from the wheels as they passed.

Minnie and her sister went up to return the baby to her nurse, but the boys demanded food, and shedding their pumps, satin coats, and linen neckcloths with abandon, besieged their father for nourishment.

“I want almond biscuits, Papa!”

“No, apple ’n’ raisin pie!”

“Treacle tart, treacle tart!” piped Henry, raising a general cheer.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” Hal said, trying in vain to quell the riot. He put a hand to his head, which seemed somewhat the worse for wear. “Come along, Cook will find us something, I daresay.”

He ushered his troops firmly before him, but then paused and looked back at Grey, hand on the baize door to the kitchen passageway.

“Will you do us the honor to share a dish of treacle tart for breakfast, my lord?” he asked politely.

“With all my heart,” John said, and grinned exceedingly. “Your Grace.”

He handed his cloak to the footman and made to follow them, but was stopped by a glimpse of his own name. The early post had been left on the silver salver by the door, and a letter addressed to Lord John Grey lay on top. Frowning, he picked it up. Who would send a letter to him here?

He broke the seal and unfolded two sheets. The first was a drawing; a sketch of the Roman Forum. He recognized the view, from the top of the Capitoline Hill. The message on the second sheet was brief, written in a clear, round hand.

The seagulls on the Tiber call all night, and call your name.

“Ave!” they cry.

“Ave.”

There was no signature, of course.

“Ave,”Grey said softly, “atque vale, frater meus.”Hail—and farewell. And touching the corner of the note to the candle flame, held it until his fingers began to scorch, then dropped it on the salver, where it flared and burnt to ash. He put aside the drawing—to remember.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

“Hogg house.”When Lord John reflects that surely Geneva’s body does not lie “in some hogg house or desolate shed,” he is not considering that her family might have left her in a pig-sty. A “hogg house” was a storage building for dried peat.

Homophobia.I am greatly indebted both to Norton Rictor ( Mother Clap’s Molly-House) and to Byrne Fone ( Homophobia: A History) for insight into the perception and treatment of homosexuals in the mid-eighteenth century. Quotes in this book regarding the social and legal prosecution of “sodomites” are taken from Homophobia,and are actual quotes from the newspapers and other periodicals of the period.

Horace Walpolewas one of the best-known letter-writers of the early-to mid-eighteenth century, and his collected correspondence is as valuable to a student of that period as Samuel Pepys’s diaries are to an earlier one. Fourth son of the formidable Robert Walpole (First Earl of Orford, who more or less invented the office of prime minister, though he himself refused to use that title), Horace was not political himself, but had great insight—expressed with wit and irony—into the social, military, and political processes of his milieu.

Prejudice.Speaking of phobias…historical attitudes in England toward the Irish, Scottish, etc. are rendered as they were (interpreted through writings of the period), rather than as modern political correctness might desire (e.g., descriptions of the Irish gathering “like fleas” and other opprobrious remarks are taken from primary sources of the period, as quoted in M. Dorothy George’s London Life in the Eighteenth Centuryand Liza Picard’s Dr. Johnson’s London).

A Note on Scots/Scotch/Scottish

So far as I know (judging from published material from the period), everybody in the British Isles (including the Scots), used “Scotch” to refer to the people (as well as the whisky) up until about 1950. At which point, the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) got their feet under them and started in.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that one of the first things a political action group representing a minority does is to respecify the name of said group as a means of asserting independence—i.e., “negroes” became either “black” or “African American,” “Indians” became “Native Americans,” etc. By the same token, the Scotch became “Scots.” (In all justice, “Scots” as a term referring to the people was certainly in use for centuries prior to that; however, “Scotch,” “Scotchman,” etc. were also acceptable and widely used; post-SNP, this was seen as deeply offensive.)

Just to be confusing, “Scots” is also the term used (both historically and in modern times) for the Scottish dialect—or language as the case may be (again, with the political activism). I asked a friend—a well-known linguist and the dean of the college of Arts and Letters at a prominent university—what the position was on Scots in linguistic circles: Dialect of English, or distinct language? She (an Englishwoman) looked round to be sure we were not overheard (we were at a cocktail party, surrounded by wealthy alumni, none of them either Scottish or linguists), lowered her voice, and said, “Well, if you’re Scottish, then of courseit’s a separate language—and if you aren’t, then plainly it’s not.”

Anyway, “Scotch” and its derivatives (“Scotchman,” “Scotchwoman”) were used by everybody—including Scottish people (I have a book of popular jokes and comic routines done by Sir Harry Lauder—a popular Scottish comedian of the ’40s and ’50s, which uses “Scotch” as a designation of people throughout) up ’til about the mid-twentieth century. You still see such references in novels published later than that, but by about 1970, “Scot,” “Scots,” and “Scottish” had become pretty much de rigueur,and “Scotch” was now strictly limited to whisky and 3M’s” brand of transparent tape. In the eighteenth century, though, “Scotchman” was still common usage.

The Seven Years’ War

I made a conscious decision not to provide detailed explanations, maps, etc., regarding the political, military, and geographical nuances of the Seven Years’ War. While this was a complex and fascinating conflict—it was, in many ways, the first “world war,” being fought on several continents and involving virtually all the countries of Europe and their colonies—this isn’t actually a book aboutthe Seven Years’ War; it’s a book about a soldier.

Lord John Grey, Major in His Majesty’s army, is a career soldier. He doesn’t ask whether a particular cause is worth his labor or his life; he fights because it’s his duty and his calling. Therefore, other than indicating theaters of military operation, and brief references to important battles or events, I’ve focused on the details of an English officer’s daily life, rather than on the larger issues of the war.

For those military buffs interested in the Seven Years’ War, there are masses of material available—far too much to cite even summarily here. For those who would enjoy a quick overview, though, allow me to recommend Osprey Publishing’s The Seven Years’ War,by Daniel Marston, part of their Essential Histories series (ISBN 1-84176-191-5, Osprey Publishing Ltd., London, 2001).

British regiments

Owing to the way in which British army regiments were named—i.e., in a generally sequential numbering system—I was obliged to appropriate an existing regimental number of approximately the right vintage for the Duke of Pardloe’s fictional regiment. The real 46th Regiment of Foot was the Duke of Cornwall’s regiment, also known as “Cornwall’s Light Infantry” and “The Red Feathers.”

Uniform notes

There was a great deal of variation in uniform during the Seven Years’ War, owing to the great number and variety of political entities participating. For example: While most people are accustomed nowadays to thinking of the British as “redcoats,” and thus to assuming that all British uniforms werered, in fact, they were not. Soldiers of the Royal Artillery during this period wore blue uniforms, while—confusingly enough—the French artillery wore red.