Treasons gift, p.1
Treason's Gift, page 1
part #4 of Wintercombe Series
Treason’s Gift
Pamela Belle
© Pamela Belle 1992
Pamela Belle has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1992 by the Random Century Group.
This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
PART TWO
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
PART THREE
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Historical Note
PART ONE
‘This masquerade of mirth and love’
June-September 1686
Chapter One
‘No mother more indulgent’
‘M’lady — ’tis a boy!’
She hardly heard their voices, so overwhelming was the sudden freedom from pain and effort. Someone wiped her face with a damp cloth as she lay back on the pillows, gasping, her eyes closed. Then, the import of the words trickled into her consciousness. ‘A boy? Is — is he alive?’ For a moment no one responded, and she thought, with a sick stab of terror, that her worst fears had come to pass. But then, answering her, came the cry of her baby, so weak and thin that she could hardly hear it above the bustle around her, but nevertheless a signal of hope.
She struggled to sit up. The curtains had been drawn, shutting out the June sunlight, and the chamber was suffocatingly hot. The familiar people who had attended her in her labour were reduced in the gloom to dim shapes, blank and anonymous. Then, the plain, dough-pale face of her maid, Christian Birt, came towards her, smiling anxiously. ‘Oh, no, m’lady — no, don’t ee try a-sitting — do ee lie still now, ’tis all over.’
‘I want to see him,’ said Louise, Lady St Barbe, and the strength and urgency of her voice surprised both her and Christian. ‘Please — let me see him, let me hold him — ’
‘Here he be, m’lady,’ said the midwife. She was a middle-aged village widow who had borne a large family of her own, and the surprise summons to attend Lady St Barbe, who had been expected to command the services of an expensive man-midwife or physician from Bath, would enormously increase her confidence and prestige. ‘Here be your little mite.’ And with a curious expression, compounded of satisfaction and sympathy, on her plump, lined face, she put the bundle into Louise’s outstretched arms.
She had known he would be small: he had been scarcely seven months in the womb, after all, and such infants were rarely born alive, let alone vigorous and healthy. But even so, she was completely unprepared for the lightness of him, the minute size of his head, that was surely no larger than an orange under the shock of straight black hair like an old chimney-brush, and the tiny hand that groped and curled around her little finger and clung on, as though that grip was all that anchored her son to the world. So small, so fragile, so weak, surely he was doomed.
She had planned to engage a wet nurse, as most wealthy women did, and to hand him over to the management of servants. But now, seeing him, feeling that astonishingly tenacious grasp of her finger, she knew that she could not do it. For he would need so much help to survive: and only she, his mother, could possibly possess enough will, and power, and love, to save him.
He opened his eyes and stared up at her, and she felt for the first time the strength of the bond between them, and the force of her adoration. The midwife was hovering, waiting to take him back: back, Louise thought suddenly, to danger, perhaps to death. With a sudden, fiercely protective gesture, she bent her head over her son’s, and whispered softly to him, in the French that was her childhood tongue. ‘N’aie pas peur, mon petit — Maman te gardera sain et sauf, je te promets.’
‘M’lady — shall I take en from ee now?’ said the midwife, with a touch of impatience.
Louise, already utterly absorbed in her baby, brought her attention back with an effort. ‘No — no, I’ve changed my mind. I shall feed him and care for him myself.’
*
‘Thank God you’re home, sir!’ Abandoning his usual dignity, the butler came running into the stable yard as his master dismounted. Sir Alexander St Barbe looked down at him from his considerable height, and said sharply, ‘What is it, Twinney? What’s happened?’
‘It’s my lady, sir — her time’s come early — the midwife’s with her now, sir.’ The butler gasped for a much-needed breath, and found it wasted: Sir Alexander dropped the bay stallion’s reins into his hand, pushed unceremoniously past him, and ran into the house.
The head groom, Pardice, took the big horse’s head, much to Twinney’s relief, and gave him a considering look. ‘How do it go, with m’lady?’
‘I don’t know,’ Twinney confessed. ‘But she’s been in travail since this morning, and no sign yet, or none that I’ve heard. But the Widow Poole is known to be a skilled midwife, so let us pray that all will be well.’
‘’Tis too early,’ said Pardice, his seamed and sunburnt face creased with worry. ‘I told she, I told she over and over again, and so did Sir Alexander, she should never have kept a-riding, she were out this morning on that little yellow mare, and her pains started — but you know m’lady, she won’t be told.’
‘We must pray for her and the babe,’ Twinney said stiffly, with a return to his professional dignity: it was hardly seemly to exchange gossip about their betters with the groom, particularly at such an anxious time. Inside the house, in the high, light chamber above the library, the heir to Wintercombe and all the St Barbe lands was about to be born: and he knew, as did the whole household, that it was of the utmost importance that both mother and child should survive the perils of a birth that had come too soon for the safety of either.
Alex St Barbe took the steep, winding stone stairs at a run. Not yet, not yet, not yet, his urgent footsteps beat the words into his mind. A seven-month baby would be small, feeble, marked for death: and for many reasons, not least for the child’s own sake, he desperately wanted it to live.
Outside his lady’s chamber, he paused to catch his breath, and saw, sitting hunched against the wooden wainscotting by the door, the small, forlorn figure of his bastard son Lukas. The boy jumped to his feet, his face ghostly white with fear. ‘Papa — it’s Louise — she’s having the baby!’
‘You shouldn’t be here, Lukas,’ he said, and the little boy’s face crumpled suddenly into most uncharacteristic tears. ‘I know — I know — but I’m so afraid she’ll die!’ he wailed, and cast himself into his father’s arms.
Alex wanted, most urgently, to go to Louise, to discover what was happening, but Lukas was his child too, and in sore need of comfort. He knelt on the cool, polished wooden floor, his arms around the little boy, whispering reassurance. ‘She won’t die, Luikje — she won’t die — not if I have anything to do with it.’ He disentangled his son’s arms, and gave him an encouraging smile. ‘Don’t worry — she’s as strong as a horse.’
‘I heard Christian say it was much too soon,’ Lukas said, wiping away the tears with a valiant hand. ‘And the midwife said it was dangerous.’
From behind the door, faint but unmistakable, came the muffled cry of a baby. Lukas gasped, his eyes wide, and a smile broke out suddenly on his face. ‘Oh, Papa, listen!’
‘I heard it,’ Alex said, and smiled back. ‘Maybe not so dangerous, after all. Stay here, Luikje, while I go in — and perhaps you can greet your new baby brother or sister, in a little while.’
The chamber that he knew so well was an unfamiliar landscape now, dark, shuttered, lit only by one or two inadequate candles. The baby wailed again, a feeble, fretful sound, and there was a murmur of voices. Alex made his way through the unlit antechamber, where the maid Christian usually slept, and stood unnoticed in the arched entrance. Four or five women, including his bailiffs wife, Sarah Crowe, were busy folding soiled linen, banking up the already sweltering fire, stirring a steaming pot in the embers. And in the bed where together they had known so much delight and pleasure, in the six months of their marriage, was his wife Louise.
She had never been beautiful, and now, her face moulded by suffering and exhaustion, she looked almost ugly, her aquiline nose very prominent and her olive skin a sallow, sickly colour even in the flattering golden glow of the bedside candle. But then the shapeless bundle in her arms stirred, and her eyes opened, and the expression on her face, as she looked down at the baby, was as breathtakingly radiant as any Madonna’s.
Involuntarily, he moved towards her, and the midwife, Widow Poole, glanced round. ‘Sir! Be ee home already?’
‘It seems I am,’ he said drily, and threaded his way through their curtseys and bustle and concern to the bedside. ‘Louise?’
At last she looked up, and he saw with sudden fear, and compassion, the tears on her thin cheeks. ‘Oh,
‘She bain’t herself, sir, she’ve had a main hard travail, poor lady,’ said the midwife, just behind him. ‘Sir, I d’ beg ee, don’t ee sit down, please, your clothes, the baby — ’
Ignoring her, and his dust-and travel-stained coat, Alex lowered himself on to the bed beside his wife. ‘Let me look?’ he said softly: and Louise, apparently unaware that she was weeping, turned the soft woollen folds back from the baby’s face.
Red, crusty, unfinished, the eyes no more than slits, it hardly seemed human: and he could scarcely believe that such a minute creature could be alive. But he saw the movement of a tiny hand, and he heard a snuffling, difficult breath.
‘You have a son, Sir Alexander,’ said Sarah Crowe, answering his unspoken question. A slender, pretty young woman, she had given birth to her second child, a daughter, only six weeks or so before. She added, her voice soft with pity, ‘I have known seven-month children live, and grow strong and lusty. My own sister’s babe was such a one. Please, my lady — there is no need for despair.’
Louise gave her a grateful glance. Behind Alex, the Widow Poole, with a brisk and total lack of tact, said, ‘Best send for Parson, sir, and christen the poor little mite as soon as ee can.’
As if even the act of baptism were a threat, Louise hugged the baby closer, her head bent over his, shutting out the hostile world. Alex touched her shoulder briefly, and got to his feet. Under his menacing gaze, the midwife’s officious manner withered on the vine. She dropped her eyes to apparent contemplation of the floor, and a sullen flush suffused her face.
‘There’s no need for such haste,’ Alex said, quite pleasantly. ‘I shall inform Master Pigott, all in good time. Meanwhile, I think you and your assistants could best employ yourselves setting the chamber to rights, and doing all that is needful. Then perhaps my wife and son will be able to enjoy some peace and quiet after their ordeal.’
Notably subdued, the women hastened to do his bidding. Alex spared a glance for Louise, but all her attention was given to the baby: she had put him to her breast, and Sarah Crowe, kind and considerate, sat beside her offering encouraging advice. He turned away from them, and went to the door.
Lukas was still outside, of course, his face pale and expectant. Alex smiled at the boy, and put his finger to his lips. ‘Come — come and greet your new brother. Then you can spread the news to everyone.’
Father and son walked into the chamber side by side, and Alex, his hand on the child’s shoulder, felt, almost imperceptible through the cloth, little tremors of fear or excitement. The baby, its efforts to suckle apparently in vain, gave a feeble wail like a kitten, and Lukas gasped. ‘Oh — isn’t he small!’
‘Small, but strong,’ said Alex, denying, for both his sons’ sakes, the voice of realism and truth unwelcome inside his head.
‘And hairy.’ Lukas glanced up at him, with a rather nervous smile. He was normally a very solemn, thoughtful little boy, with a gravity far beyond his seven years: to make such a remark, at such a time, revealed the tension and strain under which he had suffered since that morning. ‘I thought new babies didn’t have hair.’
‘This one does.’ Alex, seeing that Louise was still utterly immersed in motherhood, turned his elder son to face him. ‘Lukas, I have an important task for you. Go tell everyone you can find, all over Wintercombe, that you have a new brother — and also tell Pardice that someone must ride into Bath straight away, to let your Aunt Phoebe know. Can you do that?’
‘Of course I will, Papa,’ Lukas said, and with a last glance at his stepmother and the baby, ran for the door, his excitement and relief at last overwhelming him.
If only everything were so easily arranged. Alex looked around the chamber. The midwife, unwontedly meek, was busy piling soiled linen in a basket, with the help of her assistants, and gave him a watchful glance: as if, he thought with rather grim amusement, he were a grenado ripe for explosion. They probably considered it unseemly for him to linger at such a time, but he did not give a toss for convention, or propriety, and never had.
His new son was crying feebly again. He went over to the bed, and Louise looked up. Her fine chestnut eyes were filled with fresh tears: once, she had never wept. ‘He won’t suck,’ she said, with a sob. ‘He just won’t!’
‘Be patient, my lady,’ said Sarah Crowe softly. ‘He’s new, and bewildered most like — not all babies are born knowing what to do. We have the rest of the day to show him how.’ She glanced up at Alex, and he saw the betraying pity on her face. Whatever her soothing words, she knew as well as the midwife of the fragility of hope.
In this chamber, at this time, he was an intruder. The thought came to him suddenly, forcefully, in waves of heat from the fire as the maid stoked it until the flames leapt roaring up the chimney to join the warmth of the summer afternoon. Later, when the baby was asleep and the midwife gone, he would return to talk to Louise. Apart from anything else, his son needed a name, whether his lifespan was to be measured in hours, or days, or years. And he, Alex, needed a drink.
Quietly, attracting no notice from his wife or his son, Alex left the chamber.
*
Sunset was approaching, and soon the curfew bell of Bath Abbey would be rung to herald the night. In her comfortable little house in Nowhere Lane, not far from the Cross Bath, Phoebe St Barbe was about to sit down for her supper when someone started hammering on the front door.
‘I wonder who that is?’ said her cousin Libby Orchard, a startled look on her plump face. Visitors to this quiet and unconventional household were somewhat infrequent, and rare indeed at such a late hour.
‘We’ll discover soon enough,’ Phoebe said. ‘Mattie has gone to answer the door.’ She glanced at Libby’s well-rounded figure, and decided, not without mischief, that it would do the child no harm at all to fast a little longer. ‘It sounded urgent — I’m sure supper will keep for a while yet.’
Libby’s expression struggled between hunger and curiosity. Phoebe ignored her, and moved awkwardly to the door of the dining parlour, her stick providing the support that her twisted, almost useless leg could not. ‘Mattie? Who is it?’
The maid came scampering in haste down the hallway, a piece of paper in her outstretched hand, and a look of dismay on her face. ‘Oh, madam, ’tis young Earle from Wintercombe, and he d’have an urgent message for ee!’
Phoebe took the letter, aware of Libby avid beside her. ‘Tell him to stable his horse in the White Hart, Mattie, and then come back here for supper — he won’t have time to return before dark.’
‘Yes, madam,’ said her maid, and hurried off to do her bidding. Phoebe, with a sick presentiment of catastrophe, was left looking at the thick, leaping scrawl, stark across the paper and barely legible, of her brother Alex.
Libby said anxiously, ‘Oh, Phoebe — is it bad news?’
There was no other reason why Alex would have written to her in such haste. She was conscious of a sudden, perverse longing to be alone. Libby was a dear girl, and extremely intelligent beneath the rolls of puppy fat, but if the letter did indeed bring ill tidings, Phoebe would have much preferred to avoid the consequent need for explanation, discussion, and repression of feeling.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Libby was asking, aflame with innocent curiosity. Phoebe was only nine years older, but at such times the gap between them felt centuries long. Slowly and deliberately, she broke the seal and unfolded the paper.
Alex had written with such speed that there were scarcely three words to a line, and the quill had spluttered great blobs of ink along the margins.
Sister,
I must tell you that my dear wife was this afternoon, at about three o’clock, delivered of a son. He lives yet, but being come two months early, I cannot share her hopes for his future: although smallness at birth is not necessarily a disadvantage, as none know better than yourself.
Will you look out Doctor Peirce, and bid him come to Wintercombe straight away — and your own presence would also be greatly welcomed by Louise, and by your affectionate brother
Alexander St Barbe
‘It’s Louise,’ Phoebe said, looking up from the paper. ‘She’s had her baby.’
