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Lawford’s Duty
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Lawford’s Duty. Copyright © 2026 by A Lady
DEDICATIONS Lawford’s Duty is for Sable Crow who supports our fanfiction with her website SharpeTales.net.
And
Bernard Cornwell who brought Richard Sharpe into our world.
Lawford Confronts his Duty
A Novel by A Lady Based on Characters created by Bernard Cornwell Chapter 3
The Past: Twelfth Night, 5th January 1786
Five days before the gruesome tea-party William had disgraced himself thoroughly. On the evening of the fifth of January, Twelfth Night, he had crept away, unnoticed - he had thought - from the tense, unhappy and joyless family gathering in the greater drawing room (where he had been sitting silently wishing that he could fly up into the sky, like the astonishing Monsieur Blanchard, in a basket attached to a balloon; or else like a dove, and go somewhere far, far away, flee into the wilderness, as it said in the Psalm, and stay there at rest for the remainder of his life) (1) and made his way to the narrow passage which opened from the north side of the Long Gallery on the first floor where he had for a long time now known that there was a discreet door set into the wall at the far end of it, painted the same shade of green so as to render it almost invisible, which gave onto a steep narrow service staircase. Poorly-illuminated by day by what little light could penetrate downwards through several storeys, having first negotiated its way through an attic skylight which had not been cleaned for many years owing to its difficulty of access, by night it had been as black as a pit, so William had taken care to take up a candle from a bracket on the wall of the passage before he had ventured through the door. Closing it quietly behind him he had sat down upon the staircase, which had climbed almost vertically like a ladder from the cellars and kitchens and sculleries all the way up to the attic floor, and for a little while had simply revelled in his solitude, confident that, for this short span of time at least, he was not being observed or judged. This servants’ staircase, which was supposed to have been out of bounds to himself and his brothers (to Henry and to Francis, anyway; Charles had been used to go where he pleased, with impunity, especially when the Viscount had been away), had been one of the principal places whither William had been in the habit of resorting, secreting himself in search of respite when remaining in the public rooms within scope of Charles’s relentless scrutiny and unpredictable random malice had become insupportable to him.
Usually William had tried to keep his absences brief, for he had been afraid of arousing suspicion. His custom had been to remain sitting on the stairs for a few minutes until he had felt able to countenance the thought of returning again to the respectable regions of the house where Charles had lurked, ever abiding his chance to occasion him yet more grievous unhappiness; but as well as being a destination in itself the staircase had also been William’s main point of entry to his various routes to his network of sanctuaries, the places of refuge which he had established throughout the house for those occasions when more lengthy periods of invisibility had been in order. There had been other ways to access them, but this back-staircase had been the fastest and most direct. On this night William had meant only to remain there a short while, as ever he did, so as not to risk being hunted out, until he had felt able to return to the drawing-room, but, as he had been sitting on his customary step, all at once he had become aware of the muffled sound of instruments playing, and of voices raised in laughter and song coming from far down below. Intrigued, he had listened for a little, then he had got to his feet, not quite knowing why he had done so. He had remained undecided for a little; but then, almost without conscious intention, he had descended a short way, two or three steps, and then had come to a halt, meaning no more than to stand upon the stairs a little closer to the source of the sounds of merriment, the better to hear the music.
Inevitably, however, he had soon been quite helplessly drawn on downwards, towards the place from which had come the sound of the festive singing and laughter, so that in the end he had found that he had crept, little by little, all the way to the foot of the staircase until he had been standing at last at a door. He had meant to go no farther - but, drawn on, enchanted as if under the benign and happy spell of some good magician by the jocund sounds which had their origin beyond it, he had dared - very carefully - to push it open a small space - and then edge himself around it – until, and quite without having consciously meant to do so, he had succeeded in insinuating himself into the servants’ hall itself. At first unobserved, William had crouched down in the shadows in a corner, just beyond the reach of the radiance of the candles, the stumps of the fine white beeswax bougies which the family had used upstairs (and which, in those days, had always been replaced before they had burned to less than two-thirds their length), which stood about on every surface in the spaces which had not been covered with food and drink, and the ambit of the light of the fire burning so brightly in the hearth - simply wanting to hear the laughter and the merry exchanges, and the singing of the carols and the playing of the instruments – viol and flute, fiddle and oboe and serpent - and to see the dancing (so different from the dancing, grave and formal, to refined and solemn airs played by hired musicians, in sober attire and powdered wigs, which he had occasionally been allowed to glimpse in the grand rooms upstairs when Mama and the Viscount had been entertaining their neighbours and associates, for a few minutes before Nell or Miss Turnbull had led him off to his bed) and to wonder at the sight of the familiar faces of the servants - not stiff and blank as they usually were when in the presence of the family, but transformed - animated, and flushed, rosy with the heat and the unaccustomed rich food and punch and mulled cider, smiling and laughing and full of cheer and goodwill. Then suddenly Joseph Wright, Viscount Petersfield’s butler (who in those days, firm but benign, had had the rule of the servants) had noticed him huddled there, hiding in the gloom by the door.
“Mr William!” he had exclaimed, shocked. “What do you there? You should not be here!”
The mood in the large room had then changed in an instant. The music had ceased, the dancing, the singing, the laughter had ceased - everything had ceased. With a great scraping of chairs and benches, everyone who had not been already up and dancing or moving about to fetch food and drink had now sprung to their feet. Silence had fallen. William, now horrified at what he had done, had felt as if he had been a great clumping mortal stamping about in the woods on a Midwinter’s Eve who had foolishly, clumsily blundered into a fairy revel. Mortified, he had scrambled upright at once.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please continue! Wright, I’m sorry! I’ll go – I’ll go back at once. I only came down because I heard the music. I could not help... and upstairs it is so very…”
William had been unable to finish, but had not needed to. Wright had known well enough that upstairs it usually had been, indeed, so very.
“Five minutes, Mr William,” Wright had said, mildly now, at last, torn between the inclination of his heart (for he was a kindly man, and had long been in the habit of observing everything about his master’s family, and commenting tartly upon their doings – to himself - and had ere this formed his own set of opinions concerning how they had carried on, particularly in regard to this boy) and his knowledge of his duty. “Then you must go back before you are missed. You must not be caught here; you know they would punish you - but - “ What to do in the mean time? Wright had cudgelled his brains and had then had a happy thought. “Martha! Mark!” he had called. Following the direction of Wright’s glance with his own eyes, William had then noticed, standing some way off near the fire, two fair and bonny children who had appeared to be about the same age as each other, which had also been his - eight or nine years old, then - who had, judging from their expressions, been staring solemnly at him since his dramatic exposure as an interloper amongst them. They had seemed to William to be brother and sister, twins, perhaps; they had had near-identical pale-complexioned and delicately pretty faces, and hair of the same rich red-golden hue. Then the children had in the same moment left off their large-eyed deferential solemnity and had smiled at him, as children trained to kindness and considerate behaviour, confident that they themselves are loved and valued, not simply by their parents but by the other adults of their community, will do, welcoming another child; but William had looked away, stricken by sudden shyness and confusion. “Children,” Wright had said then, addressing them, “bring Mr William a slice of Twelfth-Cake, and a small glass of the mulled cider, for it is still the season of hospitality.”
The tension had broken. Hesitantly at first, then, but with increasing confidence, the music and the merriment had resumed. Meanwhile the children had brought the treats.
“Mark and Martha Lucas, Mr William,” Wright had said, to William, at their approach. “Their father is Matthew Lucas, the head gardener.”
William had looked at them timidly once again as Martha, who had appeared the more forward of the two, had curtseyed very properly. It had occurred to William that she had been long practising that manoeuvre, and it had struck him that therefore she was clearly intended by her parents for a life in service, either at Durford or at another of the great houses which were thickly distributed in that part of England. Mark had just stood staring at him meanwhile. William, unable to sustain his gaze for long, had now been scrutinising his own feet as if they had suddenly become of surpassing interest to him. Then Martha had spoken to her brother in a low voice.
“You know you should bow, Mark.”
At her prompting Mark had bobbed his head awkwardly. They had made their offerings.
“Thank you,” William had said, hesitantly, shyly, barely audible.
Martha had performed another creditable curtsey and Mark had bobbed his head stiffly again, and then both had returned to their places – Martha almost reluctantly, he had thought, but Mark as if he could not wait to be off. William had then examined the things which they had brought for him – the slice of rich cake packed with raisins and sultanas and shreds of orange-peel all soaked in brandy, with its yellow almond-smelling marchpane shell and its sugar-icing hard as plaster layered upon it, and the fragrant cider punch; but then he had come to himself, for time was passing, and he had quickly consumed both the cake (leaving the icing, as it would have taken him too long to address that) and the cider, as if suddenly terrified, Wright had thought, watching him, shaking his head ruefully, that at any moment Mr Charles would appear, seize him by his collar and drag him away to administer a whipping for his disobedience.
William meanwhile had glanced keenly about the festive hall, anxious to fix in his memory the pleasant scene, gently illuminated by the soft yellow light of the candles and the ruddy glow of the fire. The chamber had been green with glossy shining evergreen holly and ivy and fragrant with the scent of cloves and cinnamon, bay and rosemary. He had wanted so much to remember it all – for it had been, William had thought, just as things should be when pleasant honest people, men and women of good will, of simple tastes, easily pleased and who did not all have brass stair-rods up their backsides and ice-water in their veins, were enjoying the Christmas season. Wright had been thinking along the same lines, accurately reading the boy’s mind. He had once had children of his own, until all three of them - a boy, Samuel, and two girls, Mary and Susan - had been carried off by the smallpox at Christmas-time more than twenty years earlier in far-away Yorkshire. (Elizabeth, his wife, who had survived the smallpox as a child, had not died of the fever but had nonetheless been dead of a broken heart by Candlemas. Well, that was what the apothecary had said, anyway.) As he had finished up the cake and the cider William had reflected with satisfaction that he had seen and heard Timothy Williams the kennel-man sawing at his fiddle, and Ned Weston the general outdoors servant drawing (it had seemed to William) the sounds of the magical world of faërie from his flute as he had breathed upon it, and Hezekiah Weeks, the groom, red-faced as he had coaxed the notes from his serpent (a preposterous instrument!) and Matthew Lucas the gardener, Adam’s successor, conjuring the sonorous noble sounds of Eden’s primal orchestra from his viol, and – had that in truth been Alfred Mitchell the game-keeper – yes, it had been! extorting those plangent nasal complaining notes from his oboe! - all of whom William had many times heard playing the solemn hymns and psalms at Church on Sundays (Who would true valour see he had loved especially, as it had spoken of hobgoblins and foul fiends, the stuff of the stories in which he had delighted); but he had never imagined that they had possessed this secret, parallel repertoire of joyous, riotous, thoroughly worldly music, and these people’s carols that treated so bluntly of a petulant Joseph’s doubts concerning Mary’s fidelity, and threats of extortion and intimidation unless the mistress brought out the mouldy cheese and the figgy pudding in short order! William had longed to stay and had felt that he could have listened until the fire had burned itself out and the slug-a-bed midwinter sun had come up over the South Downs at half-past eight o’clock the next morning. But –
“Better go now, Mister William,” Wright had said to him then, kindly but nonetheless insistent.
“Yes, I must. Thank you, Wright. You have been very kind; much kinder than I deserved, in light of my ill-mannered intrusion upon your revels. Please thank Martha and Mark for the cake and the cider. I think I might have forgotten to do so, I was so... If so, I must see to it that I mend my manners in future. A happy Christmas to you all, for the last time this season, and good night.”
“Good night, Mr William, sir - and take care as you go back.”
“Oh, I shall, Wright, have no fear! Goodnight to you all!”
For God’s sake take care, Wright had thought, as he had watched William pass through the staircase door.
When William had climbed the staircase and pushed open the door to the first-floor passage, as stealthily as ever might be, Charles, who of course had seen him leave the drawing-room, and had stealthily followed him as far as the end of the passage at the end of which had stood the hidden door, and had formed a shrewd notion of whither he had gone after that, had been waiting for him on the other side, and retribution had been swift. It had been the still-fresh memory of the thrashing which Charles (who had been a strong and well-grown youth, at eighteen) had administered on that occasion which had largely accounted for William’s particularly silent and withdrawn demeanour towards the adults on the afternoon of the tenth of January, five days later.
Before January had been over, Miss Jane Turnbull, William’s beloved governess, had received her notice. Now that William had been informally betrothed, Lady Petersfield had conceded that it had seemed absurd for him to remain any longer under the tutelage of an instructress. He had been having lessons in mathematics and in Latin and Greek with Mr Whitstable for a year or more, since Francis had gone to school, in any case, but now he was to be promoted full-time to study with the tutor in preparation for his going to school too in due course.
The day of Miss Turnbull’s departure had been cold and grey and wet. The rain had been falling hard and it had been growing dark as, late in the February afternoon, she had left the house and made her way towards the carriage which would take her as far as Petersfield, where she would wait in the salon at the Crown for the mail-coach to London, expected from Portsmouth later that evening. They had kept the knowledge of her departure from him, but from the window of the greater drawing-room William had suddenly caught sight of Miss Turnbull descending the steps to the gravel drive, dressed warmly for a winter’s journey, and struggling with a considerable number of large bags. To his mother’s consternation, William had fled precipitously from the room with a cry of grief and had hurtled recklessly down the great stairs, and had run through the lobby and out of the doors and had all but thrown himself down the steps, and, catching up with Miss Turnbull, had flung his arms about her waist, calling her name and weeping passionate and bitter tears all the while.
“Miss Turnbull! Miss Turnbull!” he had cried. “Where are you going?”
“Away, William. I must. It is time. I am told that you are almost a man now, and that accordingly you no longer require a governess.”
“But you must not leave! What shall I do?”
“For a first thing, I should be most obliged if you would take two of my bags to the carriage,” she had said, with forced jollity. William had at once picked up the two largest bags, which Miss Turnbull had been compelled to drop as a result of his assault, and had begun to stagger with them towards the carriage, causing Miss Turnbull to exclaim,
“William, no! I spoke in jest. I can manage! It will be all right. Mr Whitstable will continue to teach you Latin and Greek and Mathematics, just as he has been doing; and he will give you lessons in more besides, for in two or three years, you know, William, you are to go to school, where you shall learn to be a proper gentleman; accordingly, you will need to have knowledge of all subjects which are the fitting study of gentlemen: more knowledge than I am able to impart.”
“No!” William had not wanted Latin and Greek and Mathematics. He had wanted Art and Literature and Music! Above all, he had wanted Miss Turnbull, who had been as a loving sister to him in the five years since he had left the nursery. William had dropped the bags and had run back to Miss Turnbull, encircling her waist with his arms once more. “I want you!”
“Goodbye, William,” Jane Turnbull had said, to that, wanting to weep herself, if truth be known – not on her own account, for she had already secured another position - but on his. She had become very fond of William, almost as if he had been her own little brother. It had hurt her to part from him, particularly in light of what she had observed of his family over the preceding five years. “Work hard at your lessons and do not forget to practise and to improve at the pianoforte. Mr Tolfree at St Peter’s has agreed to be your music-master. He will come from Petersfield once a week. He has said that he will be willing to teach you to play the organ too, if you wish it, once you have grown a little, so that your feet might reach the pedals. Should not you like that? Now I must go, if I am to be ready to meet the coach to London, where my friends await me. God bless you, William, dear.” Gently she had begun to unwind his arms from around her waist.
“You will write? Please write!” William had begged her, at first resisting her attempts to disengage herself; but she had just looked at him sadly as she had turned from him to climb into the carriage. She had waved once as it had begun to move away down the drive, leaving him kneeling desolate where he had sunk down in grief and despair upon the gravel of the carriage-drive, weeping, in the rain and the growing darkness.
Francis, who had witnessed the scene from the window of his chamber, longing to comfort his brother but so far deeming it wiser to forbear to intervene, now had come from the house bearing a waterproof tarpaulin cloak. He had wrapped it about William, and had led him away, conducting the boy to his chamber. He had then ordered a servant to make up the fire and afterwards to bring hot water sufficient for a bath. In the meantime, he had said, he would take care of William.
“They did not even send a man to carry her bags!” William had observed, in a condition between grief and anger, still distraught, shivering now, whilst Francis’ instructions were being carried out.
“I know. I saw. It was - regrettable. It was not – proper – to treat a lady so. I shall try to find out who made the arrangements. Now, get out of those wet clothes. Do not mind me; I shall look out of the window.”
“And it was raining!” William had gone on, as he had discarded his wet things. “Left to carry her own bags, in the rain, and no-one standing by with an umbrella to shield her from the weather!”
“Yes. I shall be sure to raise the matter with Mama. She is not always… sensible. Miss Turnbull was treated poorly, I cannot deny it. It is a black mark against our family. Now,” Francis had gone on, “put you on that warm robe hanging there, William, and sit by the fire and compose yourself. I shall go now, but I shall return in a little while.”
Francis had reappeared later to make sure that William had been put to bed in fresh sheets in a night-gown aired before the fire, with a cup of honeyed warm milk to drink before he had retired. Francis had stayed long enough to talk earnestly with him, and to say a prayer for the safety and well-being of Miss Turnbull, and for her future good fortune, until William had eventually fallen asleep - as his mother the Viscountess should have done, if she had not by this time been rendered insensible by her daily drops of laudanum which had laced a glass or three of her favourite sweet dessert wine.
The next day the Viscountess had upbraided William in what, for her, had been unusually harsh terms, for having made such a disgraceful scene.
“I cannot understand your behaviour of last evening, William!” she had said. “Cry so - for her? Miss Turnbull? She was only the governess! Her father, when he was alive, had been nothing but a perpetual curate on a stipend of little more than fifty pounds per annum! Her family would have altogether sunk had it not been for fees and gratuities, and had not her mother had a thousand from an uncle in trade which had yielded another forty pounds in the four percents! A scant one hundred and fifty pounds a year! And Mr Turnbull’s father had been only an ecclesiastical Counsel in the Consistory Court. Miss Turnbull was a gentleman’s daughter in name only! For shame, William, to demonstrate such passionate grief on account of a mere - governess! And before the eyes of the servants! It showed great want of discipline on your part, and was, I fear, the symptom of a fevered sensibility. It is well for you that I administer only the febrifuge of admonition, for had the Viscount not been from home he would have had you whipped for making such a public exhibit of yourself - you may depend upon that.”
“Yes, Mama,” he had said, hanging his head.
But Miss Turnbull had been more than simply William’s governess. She had been his sole ally from the moment when, aged four and a half years, on an oppressively hot and overcast August day in 1781, she had taken him downstairs to the great echoing lobby of black and white marble chequerboard to greet the Viscount, newly-arrived home from the West Indies. A messenger had been sent on ahead from Petersfield to alert the household to his coming, but Miss Turnbull and William had been the last to get into position and the Viscount’s carriage had already been sighted on the drive. Miss Turnbull had congratulated herself that their arrival had been nicely timed, for the child would now have no opportunity to become bored or tired or fractious, or to begin to fidget, which he had been prone to do, and which had often brought down the displeasure of the Viscountess upon her head. William had spent the previous two days making an intricately detailed drawing of a ship at sea, copied from a picture in a book, as he had been as yet unpractised in the skill of creating images from his imagination: standing upon the deck had been a figure, based upon the Viscount as depicted by Gainsborough in that intimidating family portrait which hung upon the wall on the first landing of the great stairs, which William, in his best writing, had carefully labelled Papa. William and Miss Turnbull had been standing at the end of the parade of staff and family nearer to the house, at the foot of the sweeping flight of steps which led up to the great double doors leading into the lobby; but as Lord Petersfield had stepped down from the carriage, the small child had all at once tugged his hand free of Miss Turnbull’s and had begun to run towards the Viscount, holding out the picture for him to admire.
“William, no!” Miss Turnbull had called to him, her voice low and urgent, making as if to go after him, but simply freezing instead on catching sight of the Viscount’s suddenly vicious expression.
Meanwhile Charles had grinned a wide smug grin, and Henry and Francis, Lady Petersfield and every servant present had looked on, aghast and helpless, as William had come to a halt directly in the Viscount’s path, stopping him dead mid-stride.
“Look, look, Papa: I have drawn this for you: and see, I have shewn you aboard the ship, sailing home to England!” William had cried, eagerly – but the Viscount had simply glanced at him in obvious irritation before turning away impatiently, now scanning the collection of appalled faces for the one which belonged to the child’s governess.
“Miss Turnbull!” he had snapped, as he had identified her. “Retrieve your charge.”
Blushing fierily, Jane Turnbull had stepped forward, holding out her hand.
“Come, William,” she had said. After a short period of excruciating silence William had slunk back to her side. He had tried to hide behind the skirts of her frock of drab brown stuff now; gently but firmly however she had pushed him back into his proper position.
“Return the child to the schoolroom, Miss Turnbull,” the Viscount had said now, dismissively -– “and kindly impress upon him that he shall never again presume to address me in these terms. Now I must make ready for my departure to Town (2), and I shall not suffer myself to be troubled again today by the foolish prattle of a squeaking brat. I am surprised that you thought to bring him here.”
Without a backward glance he had swiftly mounted the steps. Soon he had disappeared inside the house.
“That was most careless of you, Miss Turnbull,” the Viscountess had said, as she had gone to follow her husband. “That there should have been such a scene enacted here this morning!”
“I am very sorry, my lady.” “Have better care in future, or you shall have cause to be very sorry indeed,” the Viscountess had said, the wide silken skirts of her fine robe française susurrating in a sudden gust of wind, as if for emphasis, as she had mounted the steps.
“Why did Papa not know me?” William had asked Miss Turnbull plaintively, once the Viscount had gone, and as the servants on the receiving line at the foot of the steps had begun to drift back up into the house to disperse to their duties, having left a decent interval since Lady Petersfield had disappeared from sight; for it had seemed to him as if Papa had not recognised him.
Miss Turnbull had considered carefully before answering him as she had led him by the hand – holding it a little more tightly now - up the steps and into the echoing marble lobby. Of course she had heard the truth of the matter from Mrs Milland upon her arrival at Durford six months before and, as a clergyman’s daughter, and therefore from a home which had been pious by default, she had seriously considered resigning the position at once, but had changed her mind as soon as she had been introduced to her charge - a pretty and engaging child who had charmed and delighted her with his intelligence and his innocent chattering and open guileless countenance, who had of course not been at all to blame for the circumstances surrounding his begetting and his birth.
“The Viscount has been away in Barbados for almost a year, William – he has not seen you since before your baby-curls were cut and you were put into breeches,” Miss Turnbull, ever the diplomat where William’s relations with the Viscount had been concerned, had said. “He will know you again by-and-by.” Then she had steered him firmly away from where the notional elephant still stood, blatant and triumphant, whilst Charles had strutted off, smiling nastily after him, and Henry and Frances had gone silently about their business with downcast eyes.
Miss Turnbull had accompanied William on pleasant walks in the Park, and had taken him for picnics in the woods (accompanied always by two stout outdoor servants armed with pistols, for there had been talk of gypsies, poachers and vagabonds). She had taught him the names of birds, and how to distinguish their songs and calls; she had read with him, and had brought their reading alive, acting the characters in the plays of Shakespeare (suitably redacted for his age) and teaching him to do the same; she had taught him innocent games of cards; she had taught him to play upon the spinet in the schoolroom, and to sing. Out of sight of the house she had often kicked off her shoes, hitched up her skirts and run races with him on the springing greensward, and had once even shown him how to climb a tree – “My brother Matt taught me,” she had said. “He’s a Lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy – or at least he will be, once he has his commission – he passed his lieutenant’s examination a year ago now.” It had been brother Matt’s sketch of his ship Actaeon, fifth-rate, 44 (in which he had still lingered as an impatient Midshipman, lacking patronage) of the squadron which had supported the former hero, latterly traitor, Edward Despard in a famous action in the West Indies, which had in part inspired William’s own ill-fated handiwork. They had laughed together every day, even during lessons. William had liked her a great deal, and in the end he had dared to love her, like – a sister, he had supposed. But they had banished her, sent her away; if she had ever written to him afterwards, perhaps with news of her beloved brother Matt now made at last, he had never received any letter.
Somehow, after that, William had always felt that Miss Turnbull’s sudden departure had been his fault: further punishment for his disobedience on Twelfth Night, and for whatever it was that he had said or done which had provoked Jessica’s innocent remark at the tea-party which had in turn made the adults so obviously uncomfortable.
In the weeks following the birthday tea-party, at first William had often asked the Viscountess if Jessica might come to visit, or if he might be permitted to visit Jessica. Lady Petersfield had seen no harm in it, and from time to time she would write to seek the permission of the Viscount, who had been still in Barbados; but the Viscount had been implacable: it would not be wise, he would write back, for the children to become so used to each other’s company as friends and playmates, that in the fulness of time any inclination to marry might be sublimated in the kind of affection, as of brother and sister, which could well render the idea of matrimony repugnant to them.
The Present: 26th July 1798
“I am keenly aware that this ancient family, whilst being rich in honour and in history and in land, and also rich in terms of the great influence it is able to bring to bear in matters of state, could be better off as to its stock of gold,” said William. “I know that there has been a succession of poor harvests notwithstanding the recent agricultural improvements, for the weather has been against us for several successive years now and that the income from the rent-roll has fallen as the tenant-farmers have not been able to pay their dues in consequence of that. I am also very conscious that the war and the related difficulties encountered by our merchant ships at sea, together with the gathering clamour for Abolition, have also compromised somewhat our income from the estate in Barbados. You may be reassured, therefore, sir, that I shall do nothing further to cause your grip upon a wealthy heiress’s generous portion to be rendered less - permanent.”
“You had bloody better make sure that you do not,” the Viscount had growled.
There was another awkward silence which again persisted for several moments.
“Edwards awaits with the carriage,” said the Viscount, at length. “I wished to give Franks the duty of conveying you to Portsmouth, for he needs the experience of driving the team safely up Portsdown Hill. But Edwards petitioned that I should allow him to take you, in his place. I allowed the favour, as of one old soldier to another. You still have one friend at Durford, it seems. I hope you are grateful for that.”
“Yes, sir.”
William knew that he was finally being dismissed now - the moment for which he had been longing. Nonetheless, he could not simply just turn about and go. Notwithstanding Charles’s menacing presence he had to ask the question one final time. Honour demanded it – his own eccentric brand of honour, at any rate.
“What has become of Mark Lucas?“ he said.
“What!” cried Charles, at once in a furious rage. “You dare to name him - even now?”
“Charles – Charles,” said the Viscount, with a calming gesture such as one might use to placate a skittish horse. Turning to William, he said, “You shall know. I suppose I owe you that much, as it appears that even after everything which has happened during this last month you persist in clinging to a perverse – regard – for that person. I do not understand this. It goes without saying that I find such a thing to be quite repugnant and against the laws of God, Man and Nature, but nevertheless I shall indulge you, this one time. The wretch Lucas has chosen to enlist in the Sixty-Seventh.”
“Chosen?”
“I was given to understand that the alternative, that is, what would happen to him if he did not, held no appeal for him.”
“Your doing, I suppose,” William had said, tightly. The Viscount had had form where this kind of thing had been concerned, he had been very well aware for years, now.
“You know that since the passage of the Defence of the Realm Act three months ago I have been obliged to provide the names of all men of the age of military duty in my employ here at Durford to the authorities in any case. I had already named Lucas to the Rector, who maintains the register, along with others, indoor as well as outdoor servants, against the unhappy likelihood of a French invasion before the year is out. Griffiths. Collins. Weston. There would have been more had I not been obliged to let so many go owing to this new iniquitous tax upon servants.”
“The iniquitous taxes upon everything!” put in Charles. “Gloves. Cards. Pshaw!”
“I have written to Pitt to draw the obvious folly of this to his attention. Lucas’s enlisting in the Sixty-Seventh simply pre-vents the necessity of his having to fight with the East Hampshire Fencibles should the French landing barges arrive before year’s end, that is all.”
“Where is the Sixty-Seventh? Not in England, I hazard. I do not recollect having read recently of their disposition.”
“The South Hampshires are currently in the West Indies, where they were sent two years ago to suppress a rebellion of the Blacks – in Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola - although I understand that the Regiment has lately transferred to Jamaica - Lucas and his new companions will shortly follow once they have been sufficiently drilled at the depot in Winchester. There. Now you know. You need never concern yourself with thoughts of him again.”
William stood silent, absorbing this. It was no less than he had been expecting, but even so hearing it confirmed in this way had hurt him more than he had thought he could be hurt, even after all that he had endured throughout the last four weeks.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, at last. “That was all I have been wanting to know for the last month. You could have spared me the attentions of Dr Madderley had I been thus informed from the outset. You could also have spared yourself Dr Madderley’s no doubt not inconsiderable fee.”
“What, and had you running mad, barefoot and in your night-gown, twenty miles to Winchester on some doomed mad-cap rescue mission?” sneered Charles.
“Once Lucas is there,” the Viscount went on, disregarding Charles and once again addressing William, “it is likely that he will quickly succumb to the Yellow Fever, as most of the common soldiery seem to do if they spend any time at all in the West Indies. In my opinion you and your comrades had a narrow escape, three years ago. Granted, you lost almost all of your Tow-Rows and your Light-Bobs to the damned Yellow Jack whilst the rest of you were freezing and starving and getting the flux in Flanders, but that was down to poor decisions by Horse Guards and the War Office. Lucas might instead of course die as the result of a flogging in the meantime. I imagine there is an even chance of that for a common soldier of blackguardly character, such as he.”
Involuntarily William shuddered, and then, to his horror, he felt a pricking beginning at the corners of his eyes, so he shut them tightly. Charles, recognising this grimace of misery as a harbinger of tears from of old, made a noise expressive of utter contempt.
“Don’t you dare to cry,” he told him. “Don’t you even damn well think about it.”
“What of – his mother, sir?” William said, ignoring Charles and addressing the Viscount.
“What of her? I shall require the cottage for a new principal assistant to Potter in due course. The Widow Lucas must oblige us by removing elsewhere. There is a poor-house not too far off, at Portsmouth, I believe.”
“Mrs Lucas has a brother or brother-in-law in Gosport. I pray she will find refuge with him. She will have a pension?”
“She will not! She is a doughty woman, not yet fifty years old. She can work! She may walk to Gosport. The distance is but six leagues.”
“Mrs Lucas has a weak heart. She cannot walk eighteen miles! When she went there another time, Mark paid for her conveyance in the common coach - ”
“Tant pis. I am not paying for the widow of a gardener to travel in luxury, if that is what you are attempting to suggest to me. Now, then, sir, if you are quite done with quizzing me, I shall deem this interview – so distasteful, not just to me, but to both of us, I imagine - as concluded.”
Something in the Viscount’s tone then at once caused William to recall an earlier occasion. History did not simply repeat, of course. Sometimes it merely rhymed. And sometimes, it occurred to him then, it was as if it even anticipated itself. He had the strangest sense of having lived this scene, or one much like it, more than four years before. There was no adequate English phrase for this, the English being a stolid and unimaginative race, of course, but the more subtly-minded French called it déjà vu.
The Past: 10th January 1794
On his seventeenth birthday, eight years to the day following the occasion of the tea-party at which he had been introduced to his future bride, a small girl of only five years but already possessed of a set of fully-formed opinions upon a wide range of topics which would have done credit to a young woman four times her age, William had stood in this room, upon this very spot, clad in an earlier iteration of the uniform of an Ensign of the 33rd Regiment of Foot (the coat considerably too large for him of course, to allow for growth) about to embark for Ireland, where his regiment had been posted. They had been supposed to be bound for the West Indies, just as they were to have been in ’95 and ’96, but in the event they had been sent to Flanders – again, just as, in ’96, they had been shipped off to India instead. Not so long since, at the beginning of the Christmas holidays in December ‘93, William had imagined that he would be returning to school for the Lent half, but the sugar protest (3) had been bringing about a steady drop in revenue from the Barbados plantation for over a year now. The money which the Viscount had been laying out annually on William’s school fees had been as low-hanging fruit when it had come to the necessary régime of retrenchment resultant upon that annoying manifestation of social activism on the part of the British public (stirred up, once again, by unpatriotic anti-Government and Nonconformist agitators, who, of course, had all deserved to be hanged, and would have been, in chains, still living, had the Viscount - an aristocrat firmly of the old school in matters of crime and punishment - had his way). In addition, the nation’s banks had been failing, falling like dominoes since France had declared war on Britain the previous year; the British economy had fallen over a precipice. The Viscount had had a conference with his father and his father’s man of law not so long ago that had had them considering retrenchments so severe they might perhaps even have comprehended the giving up of the town-house in Upper-Brook-street, a thing which would have disgraced the name of Lawford, and also no doubt caused Sir Josiah Hayles to ask some embarrassing and awkward questions concerning the fate of Jessica’s dowry. No, that £200, the Viscount had decided, could be much better spent elsewhere, and in his opinion William had had quite enough education – far more than an officer of one of His Majesty’s Regiments of Foot would ever need, anyway. Time to send him to the 33rd at last and have done with it. William had not minded too much about leaving school, but the haste with which he had now had to be kitted out for the Army over the preceding few weeks had rather drained the enjoyment from the proceedings. He had rehearsed this in his imagination several times since Uncle Hector had purchased the commission, and had been looking forward to going up to Town and being deferred to by the tailor’s assistants and the boot-maker, and a whole clutch of specialist shop-keepers, and being addressed as an adult, and admired as an officer of His Britannic Majesty’s Havercakes as he had turned and preened before the glass in all his new finery; but in the event, the visit to the tailor had been a rushed business, and the dashing about London in the hectic days before and after Christmas to the various purveyors of everything else with which he had needed to be provided at such short notice had been a frenetic, confusing and exhausting affair.
“I hope, sir, that, if it is my fate that I am to be killed in the service of His Majesty and of my country, you will remember me kindly,” William had said, with a solemnity which would have been almost comical in such a very young man who had still been only sixteen years old just twenty-four hours earlier, had it not been for the note of wistful sadness which had sounded so plangent as he had made this cold, rigid, carefully prepared little speech, he feeling all the while very trussed-up and awkward in his new close-fitting scarlet frock-coat with its red facings, deep cuffs, knee-length skirts and high stiff collar, and acutely aware also of the unaccustomed sword hanging from its slings in the scabbard at his side, hoping desperately meanwhile that his somewhat gangling still-adolescent legs, encased from knee to instep in their tight-fitting gaiters, would not become entangled with it as he tried to make his way with dignity from the room, as he would shortly have to do.
“That would rather depend upon the manner of your death,” the Viscount had told him, icily. “There is no glory in having merely been shot by some murderous piece of Godless King-slaying French filth whilst doing nothing more heroic than holding a flag. Believe me. I have seen death in its most ghastly aspects. Even if one makes one’s end as a true hero, the spectacle is in almost all cases still horrible. A man un-made by steel or by lead or by round-shot is in all cases a sight obscene indeed. And at the worst, to expose the brain of a man, that highest most intricate work of the Creator, to the glaring eye of day, amidst the charnel scenes of battle, is a grave sin, William. I am not amongst the most pious of men, as you are no doubt aware, but even I know that. Even so small a thing as musket ball may expose to plain sight that which Providence and Nature intended to remain a sacred secret. The killing, and perhaps dying, which we must do, once there is a war – is all of it an offence to Almighty God, for which we must beg his pardon and throw ourselves upon his mercy when it comes our turn, whether our doom be to triumph or to perish. There is little in it of honour or dignity, still less of glory. I was, as you know, at Belle Île in the year Sixty-One. Like most such actions which are at first counted successes, ultimately it proved to have been almost entirely without value, and too many men on both sides died in vain, many of them most horridly and pitifully.”
“Yes, sir.”
“William, it strikes me that you are in some degree of bodily distress.”
The powder on William’s hair had begun to insinuate itself into his nostrils. He had wanted very much to sneeze. By some supreme act of will, however, he had refused to submit to such bathos.
“I am quite well, sir.”
The Viscount had been right, of course; there had been nothing glorious in such a death, but if William had been doomed to be killed in the service of his King then that would quite likely have been how he would have met his end, in the centre of a breaking square, part of the Colour Party, surrounded by pike-wielding Sergeants, in a desperate last tussle with a ferocious enemy determined to take the great be-tasselled silken flags as trophies. If he had not been ignominiously shot by a cavalry scout or skirmisher of the enemy as he had ventured into the underbrush to take a piss first thing in the morning, of course. That was how his fellow-Ensign James Riddle had died the morning after Boxtel. How much less than kindly, William thought, would the Viscount have remembered him if he had died like that – or merely of heat or of cold, or of want, or of one of the dreadful diseases which killed so many British soldiers, wherever in the world they were stationed, or simply of exhaustion of nature.
“And all in return for the privilege of receiving three shillings and sixpence-ha’penny a day for your trouble. Yes, I know to the ha’penny. It was so in my time, almost forty years ago. Did you know that the Army has not been permitted an increase in pay in more than a hundred years?”
William had shaken his head.
“No, sir. A hundred years? That would have been since the time of – “
The Viscount had interrupted him. It had always displeased him when William had had the temerity to exhibit signs that he might actually have retained something of what he had learned during his expensive time at school. Unlike Charles. His education, first at home and then at Eton and then Oxford – even a year at the Inns of Court in London, where the Viscount had hoped in vain that he would learn something of the law of property, thus fitting himself for his eventual role as a great land-owner - had rolled off Charles like water from the back of the proverbial duck.
“The second King James. These rates were set by royal decree in Sixteen Hundred and Eighty-Five. You will find it difficult enough to live, even with your allowance to supplement the King’s pittance. So you must be frugal. Frugality is in any case a military virtue and should be practised even in the absence of absolute pecuniary necessity. You are betrothed to an heiress, of course, but do not presume upon that.”
“No, sir.”
“Some further advice: never play at cards hoping thereby to fatten your purse. It is a false hope. I am in earnest. Should you disoblige me in this matter and fall into debt, I warn you that I shall not be prevailed upon to settle your obligations.”
“Of course not, sir. I should never think of it. To act thus would be the sin of a callous ingrate.”
The Viscount dealt him another searching look, again unpleasantly reminded of Charles’s deficiencies. He suspected that Ardara’s bastard was presuming to criticise the conduct of the legitimate heir.
“Indeed. So, then, I wish you joy. Do not give your Uncle McCandless cause to regret his four hundred pounds. I find him a tedious sanctimonious prig, with his constant prating about the Bible and the Word of God, I shall not deny it, and I confess that I have crossed oceans to be out of England when I have had notice that he had been about to arrive in it, but he is nevertheless a good man, for all that, I must admit to it.”
“I shall try not to, sir.”
“You will not.”
“No, sir.”
William had wondered if he had now been expected to leave, but the Viscount had all at once appeared as if he had been getting his second wind.
“Bear in mind these are difficult, distressed times, William,” he said. “The French might well turn out to be the least of your troubles.”
“Sir?” William remembered that he had said, uncertainly.
“Dissent and subversive Jacobin talk is everywhere. Unrest and disorder disturb the Kingdom from Inverness to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to London, from London to Dublin. You know why this is?”
“The war, sir. It is bad for trade, and consequently the people want for work.”
“It is more than war. The people want for food as well as work, everywhere, in the towns and in the countryside. The harvest last year was poor, and so the price of wheat is high. The people cannot buy bread or other necessities, and at the same time they see what food there is to be had being packed off to the ports to supply the Navy and the Army, whilst the grain merchants make their fortunes: so they riot, and when they riot they must be contained, unless we wish to see scenes like those which have lately been enacted in France repeated here in England. It has occurred to you that, sooner or later, you might very well be called upon to act in suppression of the King’s subjects - our own people?”
“Yes, sir. It has. I do not like to contemplate upon it.”
“In Sixty-Six, when I was perhaps ten years older than you are now, I was required to order my men to fire into a mob which was rioting against the price of bread, in Leeds. They duly fired, and then I must order them to charge the crowd with fixed bayonets. There were women there, and children – babes! It was - unpleasant. It went against all I had, until then, held dear - to fire upon Englishmen, and then to subject them to cold steel - even though they were but common churls I disliked to do it, but I did it anyway, because I had been enjoined so to do, and it was my duty, so to maintain order. Could you? I ask, William, because I suspect – no – I know - that you have an uncommonly tender heart.”
William had blushed at that.
“I… I hope that, should events ever turn out so, I should do my duty, sir, as you did.”
“You had better, should it come to it. Go now.”
So he had gone, to Portsmouth, to take passage to Cork in a brig of the Royal Navy called Mermaid, travelling in the company of three other officers new to the 33rd: a captain and two lieutenants. Then, in the spring of ‘94, the Austrians had withdrawn from the Netherlands in order to concentrate their efforts in Poland, and the French, who had meanwhile busied themselves in doubling the size of their army, had seized their chance and had begun to push northwards into the Netherlands. The campaign of the First Coalition, which had begun to so encouragingly, had started to falter, and the 33rd had been ordered to threatened Ostend to strengthen the British presence there.
The Present: July 1798
“Goodbye, sir,” William managed to articulate at last. Good manners demanded that he offer his hand: he did so.
“As I have informed you,” said the Viscount coldly, “the carriage is waiting.” He turned away and walked through a door concealed behind a hanging, into his private parlour. As he went, he muttered low, “White as paper. Looks just as Fitz-Simons did that morning in Hyde Park – bloodless.” (4)
“That must have been after you shot him, then, Papa,” said Charles, with a laugh, and a gloating glance at William.
There was an agonizing protracted silence in the drawing room; an hiatus in time which felt to William like several minutes, although it must only have endured for a few moments, between five and ten advancing steps of the second-hand of the clock upon the mantelpiece.
“I expect you have been wondering about his story, William,” said Charles, nastily, at last, once the Viscount had departed.
“What do you mean?”
“The tale I made sure Lucas told to the Recruiting Sergeant of the Sixty-Seventh that day. Why he wanted to enlist.”
“You did not order him to tell the truth?”
“You imbecile! You really think I should have permitted him to tell the truth? I should have shot him, rather, where he stood.”
“Then I expect you forced him to say he’d seduced a housemaid.”
“Why do you suppose that I should have fixed upon that lie?” said Charles, surprised.
“Because it is your favourite pastime. The thing always uppermost in your mind, most likely.”
“Do you really think that he could have passed for a seducer?” Charles demanded, his voice dripping incredulous contempt. “At least, for a seducer of women? Simpleton!”
“Then – then - I suppose you made him say he’d been caught stealing.”
“Indeed, I did! Well done!” said Charles, with withering sarcasm. “It seemed suitable, likely - probable, even, with his Irish looks. He had his stripes to show as evidence that he had been caught in the act and chastised for it by me – heir of his merciful master, who notwithstanding the ungrateful traitor’s black deed could not bear for him to be handed over to the magistrates for onward passage to the Assizes, to be condemned to hang in due course - so kindly dispatched him to the Army instead. For as we know, the Army is always hungry for men. Sergeant Pratt, a particularly shrewd and sensible man by all accounts, having performed that function for the South Hampshires now for, oh, at least since its antecedent was Sir Richard Peyton’s Regiment of Foot in Papist King James’s time, so we are led to believe – the eternal Recruiting Sergeant! - was not about to look that gift-horse in the mouth.”
“What was it that Mark was supposed to have stolen?”
“Does it matter?” Charles sounded, William thought, genuinely puzzled by the question.
“He’s not an indoor servant. He would hardly have been in a position to make off with the plate, or, or unbar a door to house-breakers, or commonplace malfeasances of that sort.”
Charles sighed.
“If you really must know, William, according to me, he had a sweet little racket renting out Papa’s pineapples to the aspiring social lions of Hampshire, and then before they were quite rotten, selling them on to London green-grocers at premium rates – packed them into the coach at Petersfield and off they went to Covent Garden, clip-clop, clip-clop! – he would have made a tidy profit, which of course rightly belonged to Papa.” (5)
“Ridiculous!” William could have done without this gratuitous mockery which added further insult to an already grievous injury, he thought; but Charles had gone on.
“Yes: ridiculous; so ridiculous it had to be true, do you see? Who could possibly have invented such a story? It was Mama who inadvertently gave me the idea. When she had heard that Lucas had enlisted, naturally her first thought was for the pineapples – you know how they are her cherished centre-pieces at the dinners she loves to give to maintain her position as premier hostess of the east of the County. I imagine she was wondering how she would do this, once deprived of Lucas’s expertise. She was worried in particular about Lady Fetherstonehaugh, (6) over at Uppark, stealing her crown. The whole thing was utter perfection! It could not have worked out better. You would pay double to see such a sublime farce at the theatre. In a way, it is a shame, William, that you were not able to witness it.”
Swiving bloody pineapples! William thought; and the utter bathos of this, as if what had happened to Mark (never mind himself; he would survive and, with luck, would eventually have a respectable life again, with the Army, in India - but Mark? He was a gardener, nature and circumstance had made him so – he loved and cared for growing things; he was gentle, and kind, and emphatically not a soldier – he could not be a killer; this would end him, William knew) was just a joke, of no consequence, in Charles’s view, again brought tears trembling to the corners of his eyes.
“So now everyone at Durford believes that he’s a thief,” he said. “A damned pineapple thief.” There was the old tell-tale tremor in his voice, he knew, but he was beyond caring now.
“Would you rather I’d allowed him to tell the truth, William?” Charles was circling him now, as he had done in the terrible bloody woodland glade four weeks since, forcing him onto the alert in case of a surprise assault from the rear. “Think of it! That you and he had been revealed to be prime back-gammon players, eh? Would that have been preferable? I thought not. But I am not incapable of a little magnanimity. The story that was bruited about in the servants’ hall and in the village was that young Master Lucas, with your - inspiring - example before his eyes, was a simple one – that he had suddenly been seized with a laudable patriotic passion to go to serve his King and country.”
“Does anyone believe that ludicrous story, that he was passionate to enlist?”
“Mama does, anyway,” Charles said. If he had been taken aback he had recovered at once. “But you know she is possessed of less grey matter than would shame even a mouse, the hare-brained harlot that she is – of course she believes any nonsense Curtis sees fit to tell her.”
“Damn you! How dare you speak of Mama in that way? Damn you!” William half-turned, as if he would leave the room; but Charles, who had not done with him yet, grasped him painfully by the upper arm – always his favourite tactic. William winced at the cruel pressure on the still only half-healed bruises which Griffiths had made on that dreadful night.
“I dare to speak of her in that way because that is what she is, William; just as you, my beloved little brother, and her true son, I might add, are a simple-minded sodomite. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I share but half my blood with you. There are times when I fear even that half-share is tainted.”
“Let go of me!” William said, struggling, not knowing why he bothered, but persisting anyway, notwithstanding that similar past pathetic attempts at resistance had only ever ended badly for him.
“When I’m ready,” Charles said, hauling him closer as if to scrutinise his features, to satisfy himself of the effect his actions were producing. “I expect you’ve also been wondering why I thought to seek you out in the seed-store that evening?” he had gone on, in a lowered voice, treating him to another gloating smile. William gave him in return a look of silent miserable fury. “Of course you have. You thought you’d both been so careful; so clever, too. You’ve been tormenting yourself over it. Haven’t you?”
He had.
“Damn you,” William said again, lamely. Again, he struggled. His efforts, as always, were futile. Charles dragged him closer still.
“Damned anew, am I, William? Thrice damned! I do not know how I might bear it. Ha! It was Tom Griffiths.” Charles’s face was so close to his now that William could smell the smoked haddock of the kichuri which Charles had just had for his breakfast; a meal which William simply had not been able to face.
“Griffiths,” said William dully, wrinkling his nose. Cat breath. Those poor girls at Fetherstonehaugh’s hellish parties over at Uppark. “I might have known.”
“Indeed you might,” said Charles, letting go his hold in sudden displeasure as he saw physical disgust replace the far more satisfying expression eloquent of fear and grief and humiliation which William had been wearing until then. William fell back two, three steps. “He had known, or at least he had suspected, the truth about you two and your filthy proceedings for quite some time, it turned out. He had seen Lucas creeping about in the shadows at odd hours of the day. He had begun to form the idea that he was meeting someone, someone he should not have been seeing, or why be so furtive? Eventually, curiosity got the better of him, and he began to follow him, seeing where he went - and with whom he was keeping tryst. He told me he had become outraged on behalf of his sister, who had apparently considered herself as good as engaged to your - paramour.” Charles had spat the word. “He said they had had an understanding – or at least, that was what Keziah had believed. Poor, wronged Keziah! Quite the natural gentleman, is Tom. So when he perceived that I was searching for you that evening he behaved with commendable honour. He approached me and respectfully volunteered a suggestion as to where I might find you – find the pair of you. I think he very much deserves to be promoted to Lucas’s vacated position. I’ll suggest it to the Viscount.”
“Damn Tom, and – and – “
“No need to damn me again. Now, goodbye, Lieutenant Lawford. Be sure to give my regards to the Tippoo Sultan. Probably best if you don’t come back; although Jessica may yet be sorry. But possibly not, come to think of it.”
“In that case, I hope – “ William began; but Charles gave him one last withering glance, turned away and went to join the Viscount in the parlour which lay behind the hidden door, leaving William standing, a final half-formed would-be caustic witticism about pining for pineapples falling silent and still-born from his lips. It had not been a particularly clever one in any case. His wits were late on parade that morning for obvious reasons, and in any case not a few had been altogether absent without leave since the catastrophe which had befallen a bare month before.
There was nothing more to be done but to turn about and make his departure, so that was what William did.
The grandfather-clock in the lofty echoing marble lobby was striking the quarter after nine as William descended the great stairs, having adopted what he hoped had appeared to any casual onlooker to be a calm and dignified demeanour signalled by firm and even steps, in the event that any of the servants might have happened to be observing him from corners or from shadows or from behind pillars or almost-closed doors; but within he was roiling with rage and grief and misery. It was one thing to send him in this manner on a journey of eleven thousand nautical miles, Portsmouth to Madras by way of Cape Town, which was to take him to his Regiment in India, sundering him for a long time, perhaps forever, from any chance of his ever shaming the family again - but it was quite another to send Mark Lucas into what amounted to servitude for life as an enlisted man in another Regiment of Foot in the Army of King George, and more probably to a swift miserable fever-death in Jamaica, and in addition depriving his blameless widowed mother of a breadwinner and a home. Martha, Mark’s twin, was in service in the large imposing house of Vice-Admiral of the Red Sir Fortinbras Bampfylde (KCB) (newly-built, expensively and vulgarly furnished by his tradesman’s-daughter wife and paid for by prize money) near Fareham, only a few miles distant, and she would doubtless spare what she could from her housemaid’s pittance of £5 (sic) per annum, but… Oh, God. Mark! Mark Lucas, under-gardener at Durford, whose father had been head-gardener for many years until his quite recent death: twenty years old; not handsome so much as beautiful, his hair a red-golden wonder which he had worn long, tied in a queue in a plain black ribbon in the fashion of the century’s earlier decades; eyes a true green – peridot - moss green: pale-skinned notwithstanding his working days spent largely out of doors; of middling height, perhaps five feet and five or six inches - slightly and slenderly made. Mark was kind, warm-hearted, friendly, funny, intelligent - a fount of knowledge concerning everything which grew in the gardens at Durford and in the wider Park – and now William’s predatory family had, it seemed, decided to scour him from the face of the earth - and for what? What had been their crime, their true crime? It had amounted to few stolen kisses, William told himself. Oh, all right, there had been some hasty more-or-less fully-clothed fumbling in obscure corners, the feel of Mark’s rough-spun home-sewn garments, outmoded by decades, enticingly other to his touch (to think that he – fool! - had day-dreamed of one day taking him to visit his London tailor!) – and once, only once, that was all it had been, four purloined hours of a June Sunday afternoon together - properly together – naked, stripped of all tokens of rank and status whether high or low, lying on a bed like honest lovers, thirsty lips fast to thirsty lips, unaccustomed limbs awkwardly entwined, hands not knowing rightly what they had been supposed to do and as often as not getting it wrong - in a dim hot room filled with the scent of lavender and roses, and the joyous music of early summer birdsong.
Oh, very well. That, William supposed, had been unequivocally It. Enough to be considered a crime. The Crime. The Unspeakable Crime.
Although, ironically, that had not proved to be the fatal occasion. That had been on that evening, in the dusky shuttered wood-smelling shed, by the light of a dark-lanthorn, when they had been caught, trapped, taken together in an impossible-to-explain state of advanced deshabillement, if not quite indecency. No great Crime, as on that afternoon. But their ultimate intention had been only too plain, he supposed. Oh, that golden, magical afternoon, when they had in the end given joy – such great, pure, joy – so tenderly to one another, and only they had known anything of it! (7) - they should have stopped it then, he thought, before the joy had in turn imbued them with too great a confidence. Notwithstanding all of the anxiety and guilt which had been attendant upon the conduct of their clandestine affair, on that day Mark had brought him such delight and happiness as William had never imagined could exist, something he had not known in his life until then, except when he had been playing the fortepiano or wielding a pencil or a paintbrush; and even then the fleeting happiness on account of a sonata by Haydn or Scarlatti well-played or a picture which had turned out actually reflecting the image he had been holding in his mind, whether taken from life or from his own fancy, had been as muted and fallow as sunlight reflected from glass in comparison with what he had experienced that afternoon with Mark. It seemed almost irrelevant now, after the disaster, but he hoped that Mark had felt something of the same degree of delight and wonderment in return. It would have to do them for a very long time, probably forever – and in Mark’s case, it had occurred to William again, with foreboding, ‘forever’ might only amount to another two or three months. And nobody had been hurt by it! - at least, not until Charles had seen fit to involve himself in the affair. And, also in mitigation, there had been no more bastards to go on the parish rate as a result of anything they had done together. Charles had done far worse with a succession of housemaids whose names he had probably not even troubled himself to learn, even as he had been about the business of forcing himself upon them.
His face now a rigid mask, William acknowledged Jeremy Collins, who held the carriage door for him. Collins gave him a bleakly pitying look tinged, perhaps, with guilt at his compelled collusion, (for he had very well known what had been going on throughout these last four weeks, and had been made to facilitate some of it – the bringing of the ice from the ice-house, for example), which William did not see because he was forcing himself to direct his gaze fixedly ahead. He entered the carriage and settled himself onto the forward-facing upholstered bench. Most of his things were in boxes strapped to the roof along with his sea-trunk, but the clavichord, wrapped in blankets in its oiled canvas bag, occupied the bench opposite to his. William wondered suddenly about the wisdom of bringing it with him. Too bad. Too late now, anyway, he thought, as Edwards prompted the horses into motion. William did not look back at the House. Nobody would be on the steps or at the windows of the principal rooms to wave him off, after all.
Soon they were two, three hundred yards down the drive. William waited until they were well away from the house, and then he gave vent to an incoherent exclamation expressive of fury, misery and despair. A scream, in other words. The carriage halted. Damn. He had not thought Edwards could have heard it over the noise of hooves and wheels crunching over gravel.
“Is everything all right, sir?” called Edwards. “Not forgotten anything? Purse, papers, commission? The usual things young officers tend to forget in favour of racy books and their favourite vintages, haha?”
Edwards knew he had licence when it came to Mr William, they both having served in the 33rd in Flanders, Edwards as a Sergeant, William as an Ensign.
William opened the window and called up to Edwards. “Sorry, Edwards. I – er – I just coughed, is all. Everything is well. Walk on.”
“I doubt that very much,” said Edwards to himself, quietly, as he sat up on the box; but he flicked his whip gently and now they were moving again.
Scream more quietly next time, William told himself, meanwhile. O God! Mark! The Viscount and Charles, they had certainly given Mark what amounted to a death sentence! He buried his face in his hands and in the privacy of the carriage he wept, silently, the tears against which he had struggled throughout that unspeakable interview no longer permitting him to deny them their expression. He rocked himself very slightly to and fro for comfort, as he had first learned to do in the nursery many years earlier, his own arms wrapped tightly about himself and wishing, desperately but hopelessly, that they had been Mark’s instead.
Durford Abbey, or Durford Park, lay not far from Petersfield in Hampshire: from the gates of the Park to Portsmouth it was perhaps a little more than six leagues - eighteen miles; so on a decent road in gentle weather they now made good time, pausing at noon at the Ship and Bell at Horndean for cold meats, cheese, bread and a bottle of wine (French wine, the good stuff, and not too hard to come by so close to the south coast, even in the present circumstances, thanks to the sterling efforts of England’s patriotic smuggling fraternity) in the parlour (for William) and the same, but with a mug of ale (and still seated on the box, to guard the baggage) for Edwards, and to water and feed the horses. They had already covered more than half the distance.
In the middle of the afternoon they came to a point on the way where the road began the ascent of the steep north-facing escarpment of Portsdown Hill. William had Edwards stop the carriage, so that he could get out and walk beside the labouring horses, who had enough to do hauling his baggage up the gradient without the admittedly slight but nonetheless additional burden of himself, until they reached the summit. It was not an easy ascent. Any mistake could have resulted in the carriage overturning, or in fatal injury to the horses. In the worst case, if the traces broke, the carriage could roll catastrophically all the way back down the hill, causing chaos amongst following traffic and possibly killing the occupants, not only of the runaway carriage, but of others too. Well-disposed and responsible passengers generally did get out and walk, but arrogant and entitled ones often did not. Edwards glanced at William approvingly from time to time. Actions such as that, Edwards thought, had always set the Honourable Mr William apart from the rest of the difficult and hard-to-like upstairs crew at Durford, Mr Francis perhaps excepted. William could be careless and a little off-hand in his dealings with the servants at times, of course, like most of his class but he had at base a kind heart, one that harboured generous and affectionate feelings which, although sometimes awkwardly expressed – and that had been putting it mildly, given recent events - had been appreciated in the servants’ hall.
It was by now about four o’clock in the afternoon. William imagined the great long-case clock striking the hour in the chill white and black marble vestibule back at the House. His mother would likely be taking tea in the smaller drawing-room with two or three of her tedious cronies: Mrs Biles, the Rector’s wife; Lady Hetherington (the widow of a knighted Post-Captain who had been killed on the Glorious First of June, who lived in Midhurst) and Mrs Geoffreys, whose husband owned a newspaper based in West Tisted. He knew he should have gone in to say goodbye to her that morning, but after the horrible final interview with the Viscount and Charles he had not trusted himself to keep his countenance, especially if she had mentioned the business of the pineapples, and doubtless she would have done so. She had perhaps been left puzzled and hurt by his unfilial neglect (unless the contents of her gilded vial had left her happily unaware of his imminent departure, which he suspected might have been the case) so there was, possibly, something more for him about which William must feel guilty. He would write to her that night from Spithead and make sure his letter was taken off before the ship sailed in the morning. He imagined her guilty surprise at learning of his going away, notwithstanding that they had had a conversation about it some weeks earlier. He wished then that he had paid more attention to Mama over the years. She had suffered from the Viscount’s neglect, coldness and hardness of heart every bit as much as he had, after all. They should have been natural allies. But it was too late now. He was to sail for India and God alone knew when he might return, if he ever would. At that hour he could imagine no set of circumstances in which he could ever dare to go home, in any case – no, not home; home was a place where, so he understood, one was supposed to feel happy and safe and secure; a place where dwelt the dear people whom one loved, and who loved one in return, and Durford had never been that – Spean Bridge might have been home - even Eton had been more a home to him than had the Viscount’s house, notwithstanding the bullying he had had to endure there – go back, then - to Durford Park, even if he had not been doomed to die upon the bitter point of a Mahratta lance, or before a breach made in the frowning curtain-walls of the stronghold of some haughty, cunning Musselman Sultan or Hindoo Rajah both proud and wily.
“A fine view, sir,” offered Edwards. It was, too. It was a sight which William would take with him in memory all the way to India: Portsmouth spread out like a plan before him, the slanting rays of the declining afternoon sun glancing right to left, and glittering upon calm waters. The fortress of the eighth King Henry at Southsea upon the western shore of the haven crouched squat and grim, guarding its entrance; closer, Portchester Castle glimmered white - the Romans had built that, William remembered. The masts, yards and spars of the scores of vessels, ships and lesser craft, sloops and brigs and all the rest of it, filled the harbour. In the distance, riding at the Spithead roads beyond, like a floating forest, lay the seventy-fours and frigates of the Channel fleet and other shipping preparing to depart on voyages which might take them more than half the way around the world. That was where the real wave-riders, the sea-eagles, the voyagers of the whale-road, the fierce predators of the battle-line, swam at anchor. William wondered which of those distant ocean hawks was the Néreide frigate, in which the father of a sea-officer neighbour of the Viscount’s, a retired General who sat in Parliament, had managed to conjure him passage. Lord, but the sight of all that shipping, in that haven, in that hour of the declining sun, was glorious! William was so struck by the great scene that he would find that, even a few days later, he would be able to make an accurate sketch of it from memory.
“Indeed, Edwards. One of the finest views in all the world, probably, not that I’ve seen much of the world yet, of course. Only Flanders, and that, as you know, was hardly an inspiring experience.”
“I should draw a veil over Flanders, sir, and forget I was ever there, if I was you,” sagely said Edwards, who, it has been noted, had been a sergeant in the 33rd, which had been part of Abercromby’s ill-starred Third Brigade at Boxtel.
That had been the occasion upon which a scared private, a boy in his first proper battle (8), had forgotten all the drill he had ever learned at the unexpected and terrifying appearance of French dragoons from out of the September murk, and it had seemed to his inexperienced eye that the line would be broken and that they would be run down, and slaughtered; but Lieutenant-Colonel Sherbrooke, who had had the command that day, had ordered the retreating 33rd first to deploy into line and then about-face, and then to wait until almost the very last second, before he had given the order to fire. That young private had fired his musket with the ramrod still inside the barrel, and the ramrod had gone cartwheeling through the air, to impale Edwards’ knee, which had resulted in Edwards being invalided back to England, where, now walking with a permanent limp, he had reinvented himself as a coachman to the gentry in the service of the Honourable the Viscount Petersfield. The young ranker had had to make a pantomime of appearing to take part in the volley-fire after that. If Edwards had not been lying on the ground clutching his leg and screaming until he had remembered his duty to set an example of fortitude, whereupon he had promptly shut up, he would have been caught and punished for his foolish mistake. Private Richard Sharpe, aged seventeen, had been lucky, and thus a precedent had been set.
“I daresay you will see finer sights in India, sir. Striking sights. I’ve heard India is full of wonders. If I hadn’t been discharged on account of this here knee of mine, I’d be there now, sir, with the old Havercakes.”
Edwards knew that their shared experience in the 33rd granted him a little licence to speak thus freely and familiarly. William smiled at him, grateful for his friendly chatter.
“But I don’t suppose India can show aught like this. I am doubtful that I shall see anything as splendid again; or at least, not soon.”
“I hope and trust you shall, sir.”
“Thank you, Edwards; that is most kind of you.”
“We’ll miss you, sir. The servants, that is. We all will.”
William smiled at him pensively. No, he thought, not all of them. Not those two bastards who had so willingly acted as his keepers when Charles had decided to subject him to a month of imprisonment and physical and mental abuse. Not Tom Griffiths, certainly. But he threw Edwards a thankful look and climbed back inside the carriage. They went on.
They drew closer to Portsmouth. William noted with relief that the tide was, in so there was no stink of mudflats strewn with effluent and dead matter, animal or vegetable, as they approached the town. It would have ruined what could well have been his last memory of England, otherwise.
It was another hour, perhaps longer, before they arrived in Gosport, which lay a little to the west of Portsmouth itself, on the other side of the harbour, for the streets were congested with carts, carriages and foot-passengers. Once Edwards had identified a waterman – not too villainous-looking, he made sure - to convey William out to Néreide, and had deposited passenger and baggage on the quayside, William gave him a purse to pay the inn tariff for his and the horses’ overnight accommodation, with a generous tip on top of it.
“Thank you, sir,” said Edwards. Then Edwards looked troubled, and as if he wanted to say something important, but feared that it might be above his place to do so, notwithstanding his privileged status as a former comrade in arms. Hesitantly, however, channelling the Sergeant he still was at heart, he said,
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Of course, Neds. What is it?”
“Neds! A long time since anyone called me that! It’s about Audax, sir.”
“Go on,” William said, warily.
“Well, sir, that day, the day of your - accident. Mr Charles sent me to fetch the corpse of the poor dead beast, you will recall.” Edwards’s tone betrayed the fact that he had not appreciated being ordered to the task as if he had been a common carter.
“I recollect. A sad day.”
“You know I care for the horses, sir, like they was my own children. I was brought up around horses, you see, sir, on account of my father being groom to old Lord Huddersfield. He used to treat his old Lordship’s horses like they was family.”
“I know you cared well enough for poor Audax in all those weeks when I could not ride him, for which I thank you.”
“Well, sir, I come upon him where I’d been told to find him, and I has Dick Trenchard and Tom Griffiths and Ned Weston with me to help get him up on the flat-bed, sir; and Dick, he says to me at once, sir, he says, that horse don’t have no broken leg, Reg! He’s sound in all four limbs, he is! and I says to him, Dick, you’re right, sir, so I did.” Edwards’ troubled eyes looked into his. “All I’m saying, sir, is we men, we know you’ve been wronged - badly, wickedly wronged, you, and, and Mark Lucas, if I might presume to name him, both. It ain’t right, sir, what’s been done to you - the two of you – whatever stories that has been put about - such carryings-on as we’ve seen this last month with that quack from London and all!” Edwards fell silent and bit his lip. “Sir. I am sorry. I fear I have over-stepped myself and said too much.”
“Thank you, Edwards – it is all right – I am grateful. Your words have brought me a measure of comfort.” William essayed a false and watery smile.
“There is something else, sir. Ned and Dick, sir – they asked me to tell you they’re sorry about – about that night. They had to do what Mr Charles told ‘em, see, sir.”
Ned and Dick. No, Tom Griffiths would not miss him.
“Of course they had to, of course,” William said hastily, for he saw that Edwards was embarrassed despite himself. “They are not to blame - not in the least. Please tell them I said so.”
“They would’ve told you themselves, sir, only – “
“Only, I was a coward and I ran away when I saw you all coming through the woods. It was not their fault. Please tell them that I do not hold it against them – they are not to blame - for what happened.”
“I will, sir, I will. Might I, sir?” said Edwards, earnestly.
William understood then that Edwards wished to shake his hand – a courtesy which had that morning been denied him by the man who in the eyes of the world had been his father for one-and-twenty years - so, his heart swelling, he let him, and once again his eyes prickled dangerously as he said,
“Goodbye, dear Neds.”
Edwards meanwhile watched his face as closely as he dared. Truth to tell, he was deeply troubled for Mr William. He had seen him walking in the Park five days since, without any appearance of purpose or liveliness, like an automaton, his expression blank, almost catatonic. Mr William had appeared as one of the ambulant dead, such as Edwards remembered from the hospitals of America and Flanders, and the transports which had brought them home on both occasions. At least today Mr William’s eyes had no longer had that terrifying lifeless look, which had made Edwards shiver. But now, Mr William was escaping at last from the cruel tyranny of certain members of his family, and was going far away from the scene of the late awful disaster. Edwards hoped very much that the long sea-voyage on which Mr William was about to embark would effect a true recovery in him. He touched his hand to his hat and nodded, then climbed back up into his seat.
“Take care, sir,” he said, earnestly, as he prepared to take his leave at last. Edwards had been wishing mightily now that Mr William had been wearing his Regimentals. He did not at all like the thought of leaving him alone on the quayside where the sea-officers and sailors of the press-gangs were known to prowl, looking for a chance to steal away any likely-looking fellow they might take at unawares.
“I shall, Neds; do not you worry.”
Edwards was worried nonetheless. It was common knowledge that an Englishman bound for India had a six in ten chance of finding his grave there, through disease and the foul climate alone, never mind warfare.
“Goodbye, sir,” he said, touching his hat. “God be with you, to use the saying in full, and I mean that.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Edwards. God be with you too. I pray we might meet again.”
William stood alone and watched as the carriage rolled away, then he turned his face towards his ship, where it swam at anchor in the Spithead Roads. Beyond Southsea Castle, and the sea, lay India - the mysterious land which, in his imagination, was full of enticing dusky shadows, smelling of spices and night-flowering jasmine, and incense - and dung, Uncle Hector had told him once: the smell of dung was all-pervading in India - ox-dung, elephant-dung, mule and camel dung, human dung – and blood. India, looming crepuscular (for some reason whenever William had thought of India it had always been that land by night) and rich and magnificent in his thoughts, with its great princes and their unimaginably splendid palaces and treasuries, and the temples, and the mosques and gurdwaras and monasteries and yes, even the churches of the Thomasites, legacy of the first-century missionary from Christ’s band of apostles - and the libraries and centres of learning - intriguing and repellent and frightening in equal measure – India, that great mystery, half-known from books and newspapers and Uncle Hector’s letters - which lay at journey’s end.
Getting aboard Néreide had been a case of ‘easier said than done’. On the advice of the boatman William had stood balanced precariously on the thwart, abiding the moment when the small vessel had ridden to the top of the wave, when at the cry of “Now, sir! Clap on fast!” he had jumped for the ladder on the side of the ship leading to its waist, by the main-chains where the great mast stood tall, its roots deep down in the bowels of the vessel upon the keelson, and clung on with his hands with all his might whilst his feet had desperately scrabbled for purchase, feeling like a fly upon the hull of the looming frigate. How much more vulnerable he would have felt had it been one of the truly huge ships of the line! Into his mind there had, bizarrely, at the same time come a memory of the angels on the West Front of Bath Abbey (9), which in retrospect had struck him as odd until he remembered that Jacob too had been fleeing from his brother when he had dreamed his dream of a great ladder. He had got a boot full of water and had been fully expecting to lose it in the sea, and to fall in after it, the prospect of which, even though he could swim (the Viscount had made sure of that: one cold dark day of summer, under a lowering sky, when William had been about five years old, after fruitless hours of trying to make this youngest child learn the art by more orthodox means, the Viscount had finally lost all patience and had thrown him bodily from the landing-stage into the lake, shouting “Bloody swim, you useless little Irish bastard!” at him as he had screamed and thrashed in the freezing water; but swim he had, eventually) had filled him with terror. But after those few initial horrifying moments he had scrambled quickly up the side of the vessel and there had been helpful hands waiting at the rail to pull him onto the deck, and once aboard, and his considerable dunnage safely swayed up further forward, things had turned out to be bearable. Just.
On board the Néreide frigate at Spithead. Thursday the 26thof July, 1798. Dearest Mama, I hope this Note finds you well. I am sorry that I had not had Opportunity to see you this last Month. I had a bad Concussion resulting from my Fall from Audax, and I followed Dr Fazackerley’s advice to remain quiet and sedentary in order to be well enough to depart for India, or risk many more Months of Delay and further Harm to my Prospects in the 33rd. In particular I am sorry that I neglected to say my Farewell to you before I left Durford this Morning. It was very remiss of me and I apologise. I had Business with Papa and Charles which took somewhat longer to conclude than I had anticipated, and at the End of it Papa adverted me (somewhat emphatically) that the Carriage was waiting and that I should not delay any longer; so, fearing that I should be late into Gosport and perhaps have Difficulty finding a Boatman to take me out to my Ship, I did as advised and took my Departure. Edwards made good Time, however, and I was conveyed to the Néreide without Ado, and am now snugly installed in my Quarters, a Cabin kindly (10) lent to me by Mr Perry, the third Lieutenant. It is very small – you would think it a very Kennel, I am sure – there are several such, situate off what is called the Gunroom, that is, the Apartment where the Officers mess together - but there is Room for every Thing which is necessary for my Comfort and Convenience throughout the Voyage (this was not strictly true but he felt bound to set to rest any possible alarm which the Viscountess might have felt upon his behalf) and it serves well as a Place to sleep, although we do not sleep more than four Hours at a Time on board Ship as its People are divided into two Watches which take Turn and Turn about, changing, as I so far have been able to ascertain, when the Ship’s Bell is sounded eight Times. Please therefore do not distress yourself imagining me swinging in an Hammock in a squalid crowded Gallery far below Deck, surrounded by desperate Cut-Throats, for I know from my Time in Flanders how you can be Prey to unreasonable Fears on my Account. (William mentally crossed his fingers at that, having a suspicion that the Viscountess had given him barely a thought throughout the entire time during which he had been absent in Flanders.)
I now expect to be at Sea for five or six Months or perhaps longer. It is possible, of course, that we shall make the Passage in as little as four Months, although I do not think that that will be the Case as Néreide is not known as a particularly fast Sailer, for although she is deemed a Frigate she was not at first built as such, and is but an old razee‘d two-deck Ship, that is, she has had one deck remov‘d to render her a faster Frigate-class Vessel more fit to serve in current Circumstances. The Voyage to India is of no certain Duration, for successful Passage is subject to many Vagaries, not least of which are occasioned by the Weather, the Necessity of standing in at St Helena and Cape Town for Water and Supplies and often the Conduct of discreet State Business, and of course the French; but if you write to me at once at Madras, at Fort St George, with the 33rd, my Arrival should coincide with that of your Letter at around the Time of Christmas, or perhaps a little thereafter.
I thank you for the Bible which you had given to me as I lay recovering from my Riding Mis-hap in those last Days preceding my Departure. I promise I shall read from if often when I am in that far Heathen Land, and I am sure that it will prove its Value as a Guide to Right Living once I find myself obliged to dwell once more in the Tents of the Ungodly (which is as excellent a Description of a Cantonment of the British Army as I can imagine, from previous Experience) and a Comfort to me should I meet with Danger or Adversity.
Well, ‘our Yards are crossed’, as our Naval colleagues say, which means that we are shortly to let fall some of our Sails; so I must finish, for this Note must be given to the Purser to be put with the Ship’s Post to be taken off before our Departure tomorrow. Please convey my warmest Greetings to Henry and to Francis. Charles and Papa saw me off only this Morning and, the Memory of me no doubt still fresh in their affectionate Recollections, therefore have no pressing Need of my further Felicitations.
Madam, I now bid you Au Revoir; it is to be hoped Things shall not so turn out that in due Course you find that I should perhaps have bidden you Adieu rather; but if future Events should take an unfortunate Turn, please know that I am -
In great Affection, and shall ever be -
Your dutiful and loving Son
Wm Alxr Hctr Lawford.
PS Please shew a Digest of this Letter (suitably redacted as you think fit) to Miss Hayles. Assure her that my Feelings towards her remain unchanged and that I am sorry I had no Time to write upon this Occasion. I promise that I shall write to her shortly so that my Letter might return to England with His Majesty’s Ship Indomitable (74, third class) when we rendezvous at Ushant in a few Days’ Time from now.
William sealed the letter with a plain wafer, wrote the direction upon it, and gave it to a passing seaman to take to the Purser; then as he closed the door of his cabin, he slapped his forehead in exasperation. He had forgotten to send his love to Mr Johnson. Damn! Just as well he had remembered Jessica, then, of whom he had barely entertained a single thought since he had last seen her five weeks ago. And as for - O God, Mark - !
Notes
1. M. Jean-Pierre Blanchard made a successful ascent in an hydrogen balloon in Paris on 2nd March 1784. The reference is to Ps. 55:6-7.
2. It seems from contemporary accounts that Viscount Petersfield had wished urgently to see Horatio Nelson - not really a friend, but an important acquaintance nonetheless, and an ally in the coalition which had then been leading the push-back against the Abolition movement, which had already begun to gain traction in Britain and was beginning to bring about a change in public opinion regarding the transatlantic slave trade. Nelson had now for some time been in England recovering from a bout of ill-health occasioned by his recent tour of duty in the Caribbean and central America, and in August 1781 had been shortly to take up command of HMS Albermarle, hence the Viscount’s pressing need to visit him before he once again indefinitely disappeared into the great blue yonder.
3. In 1791 500,000 Britons (out of a population of 8,000,000) eschewed sugar in their tea as a result of high-profile campaigning against the slave trade, first initiated by an American Quaker, Benjamin Lay, in the 1780s. The protest had rapidly spread to Britain, where it had a negative impact on the sugar trade, and was instrumental in changing the perceptions of the British public regarding slavery in general. It was a great boost to the Abolitionist cause.
4. This was most likely because Fitz-Simons was a sick man rather than a coward; there was an inherited familial tendency to develop congestive heart disease. Fitz-Simons had died three days after Viscount Petersfield shot him, but it is just as likely to have been due to heart failure as to the effects of the injury he had received.
5. The hiring of pineapples to form the centrepieces at dinner parties by would-be social climbers was ‘a thing’ at that time.
6. Pronounced ‘Fanshaw’.
7. Not true, although William, thankfully, never knew that there had been a spy in the nearby woods who had guessed very well what they had been about.
8. No-one, Sharpe included, ever knew the identity of the culprit for certain; Sharpe was not the only frightened boy amongst the 33rd, who had not been led as well as they might have been until the advent of Arthur Wellesley, in his first battle, who had panicked and inadvertently fired his ramrod that day. NB Lt-Col John Sherbrooke was in command of the 33rd that day, not Lt-Col Arthur Wesley.
9. Carvings on the West Front of Bath Abbey depict angels descending and ascending on ladders set between Heaven and Earth, after Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28.
10. Kindness had had nothing to do with it. Commanded by Captain Rumbelowe to cede his accommodation to a glorified passenger, a Lieutenant in a Regiment of Foot who was in no wise of so exalted a station as a Lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy, Perry had reluctantly taken his gear to the Midshipmen’s berth (quarters the like of which aboard another vessel he had only a year earlier quitted upon his promotion), grumbling meanwhile under his breath about privileges granted to a no-account Lobster, who should by rights have been told to sling his hammock in the dark and foetid cockpit on the orlop-deck along with the other junior mids, amongst whom he had been rated, given preferential treatment just because his grandfather happened to be the Earl of bloody Winchester, when he, Lieutenant Algernon Theophilus Augustus Perry, RN, Third Lieutenant of His Majesty’s Ship Néreide, had commanded and taken back to port in England one of the eleven prize-ships seized after Camperdown, - ‘for God’s sake!’
NB on a larger vessel, a ship of the line such as a Seventy-Four, the midshipmen and ‘volunteers’ would have been accommodated in the Gunroom whilst the officers had the Wardroom for their mess and sleeping-quarters. Néreide is not large enough to accommodate a Wardroom however. The real Néreide was not a razée.
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