Devil Water (54 page)

“Who
wants me?” she cried, still dazed. “Oh, is it Rob?”

“I wouldn’t know, miss,” said Briggs, who had been well bribed. “But ‘ere’s a note.” He put it in her hand. It said, “Come quickly to the stable mews, for just a moment. One who loves you.”

It must be Rob’s writing, she thought. She had seen so little of it, she wasn’t sure. It was strange of him to break his promise to Lady Betty --and yet --if he had been suffering as she had, what difference did a promise make? Her muddled thoughts went no further. She made Briggs wait outside, while she put on her pink dimity dressing gown and slippers. She went downstairs through the sleeping house, and out the garden door which Briggs opened for her. She walked along the path which she and Rob had trodden today and turned at the end towards the stables. Someone ran towards her from the dark musty stable entrance. Someone wound a woolen scarf tight around her face, someone else pinioned her arms, and bound her legs. Suffocating and struggling, she was carried through the mews and dumped in a sedan chair. The chairmen ran expertly through the darkness towards Conduit Street.

At half-past midnight, Lady Betty lay sleepless, mulling over the day’s events and worrying about the best way to help Jenny recover from her foolish infatuation. Suddenly she was petrified by a high wailing scream, which seemed to come from outside and below her bedroom windows. She jumped up and ran to the window. The street below was deserted; she leaned farther out, and thought she saw a peculiar shapeless light mass at the bottom of the area, ten feet below the ground floor. There was no further sound.

Betty got up and summoned Briggs, who came staggering after her in his nightshirt, holding a candle. They clambered down to the area and found Jenny lying on the pacing stones near the coal-chute. There was blood running from the girl’s nose, her right leg was twisted under her. She was unconscious though breathing.

“Gawd,” whispered Briggs in horror. “Wot ‘appened? I didn’t think nothing like
this’d
‘appen!”

Betty subconsciously noted what he said, and she also noted that Jenny must have fallen from the entrance steps above, for a strip of torn dimity was caught on the rail. She proceeded with tight-lipped calm. She summoned the neighbors for help, their footmen came, they found a table top, and lifting the girl carefully on it, they got her upstairs and onto Betty’s bed. Betty sent Briggs running for Sir Hans Sloane. Until the physician arrived, Betty sat by the bed bathing the girl’s temples with vinegar, and praying in little formless sounds.

Sir Hans came, and looked very grave. Jenny’s right tibia was fractured. He set the leg and splinted it with deft, tender hands. “I fear, Lady Betty,” said the physician, “we have a skull fracture too to deal with. I’ll bleed her, otherwise she must be kept absolutely quiet, and for weeks probably.”

“But she
will
recover --” Betty whispered.

“I don’t know, my lady. I’ve no way of telling the extent of the damage. She has youth on her side. I’ll stay the night with you and watch. Whatever happened to the poor child?”

Betty shook her heard. “She must have pitched over into the area while running on the steps. I heard her scream as she fell.”

“What was she doing out there at such an hour? Or was she walking in her sleep? Somnambulists are frequently injured despite the popular belief to the contrary.”

“That was perhaps it,” said Betty, resting her head on her hand. And she tried to think so, though in her heart she did not. She knew that something more sinister than sleepwalking had happened to Jenny.

“I won’t let Jenny die,” said Betty in a low dragging voice.
“God
wouldn’t let her die like this -- when she has not yet begun to live.”

The physician looked at Lady Betty very kindly. He knew all that she’d had to bear with Colonel Lee’s illness, and he suspected a great many other heartaches too. “Well,” he said briskly. “I’ll help all I can -- and see, her color’s a trifle better, that’s a good sign. I really believe she may pull through.

It was the end of June before Jenny regained full consciousness. By that time, Betty -- being assured by Sir Hans that the girl was well out of danger -- dreaded the moment when returning health should bring memory and worse than that -- questions. Up till now during these anxious weeks of nursing, Jenny had roused at times from her coma, once and again she had been quite lucid, but she never referred to any moment later than the arrival of Rob at the afternoon gathering, and she said in a small triumphant voice Betty found infinitely pathetic, “He astonished you, didn’t he, my lady? You didn’t think he’d look and talk so fine,
did
you?”

Betty always agreed, though she had to turn away to hide her face. Jenny seemed to think vaguely that she had hurt her head and leg that afternoon at the party, all memory after that had receded into some limbo, from which -- said Sir Hans -- it might or might not emerge. It was often thus with a head injury, he said, particularly one which had followed on such shattering emotional experiences as Jenny had suffered. Sir Hans now knew what these were. Betty knew, her brother Lord Lichfield knew, and the Earl of Peterborough. Evelyn Byrd, who had come nearly every day and helped with the nursing, knew a good deal. But the London world in general had no suspicion of the truth. Among Betty’s small circle of friends, it was thought that Jenny had hurt herself while sleepwalking. As for the rest of the incredible, dreadful, tragic tale -- the news-sheets never got wind of it. Influence saw to that. Influence and money. These two powerful factors had also saved Rob’s life -- just.

Yet Betty was not sure that he thought it worth saving, under the conditions imposed upon him.

On the balmy morning of June 30, Lord Peterborough came to inquire after Jenny, as he had frequently. Betty received him in the study from which she could keep an eye on her children, who were playing in the garden. One of the maids sat with Jenny, who had awakened without a headache at last, and had actually eaten three eggs for breakfast. Betty reported this, and the Earl’s withered little cricket face brightened with a momentary smile, then he shook his head.

“Well, Wilson’s gone, poor wretch. The ship sailed last night. I saw him loaded on, chained to the other convicts. I spoke to the Master. He’ll be treated specially well. They’ll unfetter him after they clear Gravesend, and I understand he’ll get a good owner in Virginia -- a man called Harrison, probably.”

“Oh, dear -- oh dear --” whispered Betty brokenly. She took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

The Earl patted her knee. “Don’t fret any more, Lady Betty. Suppose he’d been hanged at Tyburn, as he would’ve been if it hadn’t been for you and Lichfield.”

“And
you!”
she cried. “You’ve been so good!”

“Bah!” said Peterborough. “Simple justice! The whole shocking business makes me sick. No words can express what I think of Wharton -- except that he’s mad, and the Pretender’s welcome to him. Has got him too, by now, I suppose. Our fine Duke scuttled away fast enough at the hint of trouble.”

“I wish Rob Wilson
had
killed him as he meant to, instead of Serpini,” said Betty violently.

“I know,” said Peterborough, “but if he had we’d never’ve got him off with just transportation, poor devil.”

Betty was silent, unable to stop her painful thoughts. Probably nobody would ever know just what had happened in the disgusting Hell-Fire Chapel. She herself had not been able to see Rob because until his trial at the Old Bailey he had lain in the Condemned Hold at Newgate. But her brother had seen him before the trial. Lord Lichfield had come up at once from Ditchley, at Betty’s frantic summons. Betty had not taken long to find out through the terrified Briggs that it was Serpini who had brought the note which summoned Jenny on the fateful night. This led her at once to Wharton, whom she confronted herself.

She found him at his home, half drunk, a trifle ashamed yet full of a glossy bravado. He referred to Rob’s shooting of Serpini as “a tipsy brawl between my servants.” This also, fortunately, was the line he had taken with the bailiffs when they had arrested Rob.

The arrest had taken place downstairs in the Conduit Street house, no one had known anything about the Hell-Fire Club. What knowledge Betty had of that had come through Rob’s private talk with Lord Lichfield before his trial. From this Betty knew that Rob, in the Duke’s livery, had gained access to the rites in time to save Jenny. That he had held the red monks and the Duke at bay while he told Jenny to run -- run for home only two blocks away. She had obeyed, and in her confused panic had pitched off the steps into the areaway.

Then Rob had somehow shot Serpini instead of the Duke.

No word about Jenny had come out at the trial, Rob would not permit it. The two earls thought his chivalry natural. Betty felt immense gratitude.

Fortunately Wharton had not bothered to prosecute. He said he had been bored by Serpini anyway. Then the Duke almost at once left London. May he burn in the hellfire he mocks, Betty thought.

“Stop brooding, my dear,” said Peterborough. “What’s done is done, and the girl’s going to be well.”

“It’s Jenny I’m
thinking
of!” Betty cried. “How am I going to tell her about Rob Wilson. He saved her from -- from --”

“Never mind!” said the Earl. “And why tell the girl? She may never remember any of it.”

“She is beginning to already. She knows Rob rescued her from something terrible, she wants to see him. And oh, Peterborough -- when I think of that poor young man, so proud, so ambitious -- he’d found his independence, he was doing well. You know yourself, you were impressed by him, and again through no fault of his own, he’s ruined -- worse than ruined -- a transported convict.”

“Yes,” said the Earl, “that’s all very true, my dear. But at least he’s not dancing on a length of rope ‘neath Tyburn Tree. His sentence is not long, considering it was murder, only fourteen years. He’ll be quite a young man yet. As for Jenny, she’ll forget him in time.”

“No,” said Betty. “I thought that only a month ago. I don’t now. Jenny was born loyal. She won’t forget him. Nor do I think she should.”

FOURTEEN

On a cold drizzly morning in December of 1725 six months after Jenny’s injury, she first set foot on French soil, or rather she climbed down the ship’s ladder and stood upon a chilly wharf at Calais.

Lady Newburgh had preceded Jenny down the ladder, so had Lady Newburgh’s French maid, Marie, and her equerry, Mr. Clement McDermott--a bleak taciturn Scot. Jenny in the three days of their association had never seen McDermott smile. Nor for that matter had she seen Lady Newburgh smile, not really -- nothing but mechanical response to the demand of courtesy. Marie did not count. She had been either coach-sick on the way to Dover, or seasick on the twelve-hour Channel crossing.

“We might as well prepare ourselves for tedium,” said Lady Newburgh on the wharf as she pulled her fur-lined traveling cloak tighter around her. “McDermott -- where’s the hamper? Miss Radcliffe and I will eat, while you and Marie dicker with the customs men.”

McDermott fetched a large hamper stocked with boiled fowl, jugged hare, mince tarts, orange brandy, and cinnamon water. Lady Newburgh was fond of food. The equerry installed his lady on a bench in the customs house. Jenny waited until her stepmother said, “Sit down, Jane, cut the chicken.”

Jenny obeyed, thinking it a very odd thing that Jenny Lee had now become Jane Radcliffe, and an even odder thing that she should be in France with the clatter of sabots, and the jabber of a strange language all around her. It was impossible not to be a bit excited by this, and by the prospect of seeing her father in a couple of days -- whenever they could reach Vincennes. Yet there were a great many other circumstances which dampened excitement. The readiest to hand was Lady Newburgh. Jenny took a morsel of chicken, and while the Countess ate in single-minded concentration, Jenny thought about the events of the last days.

Lady Newburgh had spent the autumn with Sir John and Lady Webb at their town house in Poland Street, though she had not bothered to make this known to Lady Betty or Jenny until last week. Then she had come to visit them.

Charlotte Newburgh was a tall heavy woman in her thirties. She was dressed in maroon velvet, and wore several diamond rings; her face was swarthy, her hair shiny black. She was not entirely unhandsome, nor precisely discourteous, yet she was completely lacking in humor and both her speech and carriage showed awareness of her position -- a countess, born so in her own right.

Jenny’s strongest impression of the interview was that Lady Newburgh was reluctant to hold it at all. “I am in London,” she said, after the first civilities, “primarily to look after my estate, and arrange certain family matters for Mr. Radcliffe. I’ve also investigated the possibilities of a pardon.”

“Oh?” said Betty in astonishment. “Do you mean that Charles hopes to be
pardoned?
Has he then relinquished Jacobite sympathies?”

“Certainly not!” said the Countess sharply. “I’ll not go into details with you, Lady Elizabeth, except to say that I’ve been unsuccessful. I’m returning to France on Saturday. Mr. Radcliffe desires that Miss Radcliffe shall accompany me.”

“Miss Radcliffe?” Lady Betty repeated, her jaw dropping. “Oh, you mean
Jenny!
She’s known always as Miss Lee here.”

“I’m aware of that,” said the Countess. She threw Jenny the sort of long-suffering glance one gives a clamorous puppy, though the girl had not spoken. “But I see no reason to maintain fictions where they aren’t necessary. I also think nicknames foolish. Mr. Radcliffe has been anxious to see his daughter, quite --” added the lady thinly,
“insistent,
in fact. Especially after you wrote him of her accident.”

“Jenny was in great danger for a while,” said Betty. “I didn’t tell him until she was recovering, since he could do nothing.”

“ ‘Tis a pity you disturbed him at all,” said the Countess. “I’ll set off by coach for Dover, Saturday morning at eight. Jane and her boxes must be ready, I’ll have her picked up here. I trust she hasn’t much luggage?”