Revolution (21 page)

By that time, she understood what had propelled her to the bank: a chance to relive, or recapture, the moment at the brook years ago, on her father’s estate, when Hugh had come upon her and paid her an honor she had not since received from another man. Not even from Alex.

Slowly, but deliberately, she removed her garments, all but her chemise.

It was when she stood in only the chemise that he happened to look up and notice her on the bank.

A cool breeze played with the folds of her chemise, making her more aware of her body, and pleasing her more than if she were naked. Reverdy wondered, almost as an afterthought, if she resembled the drawing of her that she had seen at Windridge Court in London, when she happened upon the plans he had drawn of a Doric temple on a secluded part of the Danvers estate. She acknowledged now that it was those plans that had frightened her the most, not their first kiss then, not the violent, possessive way he had held her, not even his outrageous actions and unconventional thinking before then and since, and the trouble those aspects of him would always
cause. It was those drawings, and his vision of her, that had planted deep in her consciousness an unreasoning fear of him.

But that is what he is, she thought, and that is what draws you to him. And she felt that other Reverdy take possession of her, and compel her to commit herself to this moment, to be what she was at the side of the brook, even if it meant the demise of everything that had happened after she had written him that last letter. He sees something in me, and it is here now, she thought. She wondered if this was what he meant by justice, as well.

She stepped into the water, not feeling how cold it was. She waded out until the water reached her hips, then immersed herself up to her shoulders.

Hugh swam slowly towards her. She watched him approach for a while, then closed her eyes. In a moment, she felt his hands gripping her shoulders, then one hand was planted firmly in her back, holding her close to him, the other exploring her form beneath the water with wondrous, renewed greed. She answered by moving her hands up to grip his shoulders. Then his mouth was on hers, and they kissed for a long moment.

He picked her up and carried her to the bank. He removed her chemise, then laid her down on her own garments, and knelt over her for a while, drinking in the vision stretched out before him, staring into her half-closed eyes. She reached up, clutched his face, and brought it down to her breasts. A moment later, when he entered her, she whispered into his ear, “I love you, Hugh.” His answer was a groan and teeth biting into her neck.

Later, as they lay together in each other’s arms, warmed by each other and by the sun, she said into his neck, in the manner of a solemn oath, “I will try to be what you expect me to be, Hugh.”

He replied, in a slow cadence, his eyes closed in rapturous exhaustion, “Perhaps, in the effort to be what I expect you to be — or what you imagine I expect you to be — you will become it. Then you will know me better, and I, you.”

She pressed her face closer into his neck and inhaled deeply, as though she were trying to breathe some essence of him into her own being.

* * *

I
t was not until late November, when all the other invitations had been accepted and fulfilled, that Hugh was able to take his guests to visit the Frakes at Morland Hall. On a dreary, overcast afternoon, Hugh rode with Reverdy in the riding chair, while James Brune rode one of Meum Hall’s mounts, the short distance to Morland Hall.

The round of dinners and suppers with neighboring planters over the last two weeks had tired them, but Hugh was looking forward to introducing the Brunes especially to his most cherished friends, and assured them that the conversation at Morland Hall would not remain courteously conventional and safely topical. He said little more about the Frakes and their other expected guests, other than giving the Brunes brief backgrounds of Jack and Etáin, of Thomas Reisdale and John Proudlocks.

Hugh and Reverdy met alone when they could. He did not care if their discreet, passionate unions broke all proprieties that governed the relationship between a man of his rank and a gentlewoman of her status.

“It is the end of my Carthusian sojourn,” he said to her once as they lay together in his bed one night. “I am almost grateful that Governor Fauquier has prorogued the Assembly, for otherwise I should be in Williamsburg now, engaged in far less joyful matters, and we would only be able to see each other over tea in Mr. Marot’s coffeehouse.” He pressed some of her disheveled hair to his lips.

Reverdy said lazily into his ear, “Have you been such a monk? You make love, not like a man who has forsaken all earthly ecstasy, but like a master of its arts.”

“I have imagined what I would do, how I would be with you, Reverdy, so many times. You were never forgotten, not in any sense.” Hugh turned his head to gaze at her. He gently ran the back of a hand from her breasts up to her shoulder, to her neck, then to her face, ears, and hair. “You look magnificently consumed, Reverdy, like a woman who is resting from a violent ride to heaven.”

Reverdy blushed with pride, pressed her face into his, while her hand dug cruelly into the muscles of his bare upper arm.

When Etáin met Reverdy Brune-McDougal, she instantly recalled, from so many years ago, during their first meeting at Enderly at the victory ball, Hugh’s and her exchange about the woman, whom she recognized from the framed profile of her in Hugh’s library.

“Ancient lore has it that a dying Amazon would hold her slayer’s eyes, and cause him to fall in love with her, so that after she was gone, he would pine away in regret. Love of her was her cruel retribution.” “Has an Amazon gazed into your eyes, Mr. Kenrick?” “I no longer think so. She is not slain, and has married a Boeotian. It is the stuff of one of Mr. Garrick’s plays.” “One of his tragedies?” “For my role in it, yes. For hers, a farce that was not so amusing. You see, she wrote me a kind letter.…”

Etáin now asked herself, as she appraised the regal, elegant woman who was introduced to her by Hugh: Had it been a tragedy, or a farce? Had
this
woman truly married a Boeotian, as Hugh had called the woman’s late husband? How could
this
woman have given up Hugh? She glanced at him. He was introducing her brother James to Jack, Thomas Reisdale, and John Proudlocks. He looked happy, and somewhat proud, and at ease as he introduced Reverdy to the men.

And she glanced at Jack. This was one of the rare times that he had decided to hold a supper for purely social reasons. John Proudlocks had brought the news that Meum Hall had visitors, and that they were friends of Hugh’s from England. Jack had extended the invitation out of sheer curiosity.

“Except for John Ramshaw, I don’t know any of Hugh’s other friends,” he said when he proposed the supper to her. “For once, I am genuinely intrigued by his past associations.”

Etáin had nodded in agreement. “Mr. Proudlocks said that the woman is Hugh’s former fiancée, and the man her brother. They grew up together, I understand.”

Jack was also appraising the woman, and seemed tentatively to approve of her.

Reverdy Brune-McDougal made her own observations, as well. She could tell by the way Etáin spoke to Hugh, by the way she looked at him, by her manner with him, and by his manner with her, that this woman had been his “hope of desperation.” She was not certain she could like her, or her husband. Thomas Reisdale was civil to a fault, while the bronze face of
the Indian fascinated her when she knew it should not. She wondered what his place was here. She and James had seen a few Indians in Norfolk, and in Hampton, and they were nothing like this man.

After supper, while Mary Beck, the cook, and Ruth Dakin, her assistant in the kitchen, served tea, coffee, and dessert, Jack Frake announced, “I have decided to use this occasion to allow Mr. Proudlocks there to present his first ‘fragment’ on politics and law.” He glanced at the curious faces of his guests. “He is studying law under Mr. Reisdale. I have not heard yet what he is to read, but I am certain that what he has to say will enliven conversation.” He nodded to his friend at the other end of the table.

Reverdy leaned forward a little and addressed her host. “Mr. Kenrick warned us not to expect the usual table talk, Mr. Frake.”

Jack Frake nodded in acknowledgement. “Life is too short to spend on the mundane, Madam.”

Proudlocks glanced at his tutor. The lawyer motioned to him to rise. Proudlocks stood up, took out a sheet of paper from his coat, and smiled shyly at his audience. “This is my understanding of the Glorious Revolution of late the last century. Please forgive any errors or miscomprehensions I may relate to you.” Then he brought up the paper and read from it.

After reciting briefly the events that led to the Revolution, he read, “They all wanted a king, and abhorred a republic, a kingless republic, that is. They could not think beyond the notion of a monarchical nation. The throne was unoccupied, perilously vacant. Filling it with a special human figure was not so much an obsession, as it was a mental necessity, somewhat like a picture justifying a gilt frame. The throne was the linchpin of constitutional polity; remove it, and society would fly apart. The government was like an elephant. If it lacked the requisite appendages, such as a stately trunk, which could be said to be a sovereign, how could it still be an elephant?

“A republic? Banish the thought! A nation, a government with a graceless executive who was not royal, who had no anointed divinity or hereditary rights or lineage traceable to Adam? Inconceivable! A republic had been tried; the result was a dictatorship — Cromwell! That experience seemed to prove the necessity of a king! James the Second, it was decided after some heated debate between the Tories and Whigs, had abandoned or abdicated the throne. In a juvenile fit of pique, before taking flight, he destroyed the writs for a new Parliament, tossed the Great Seal into the Thames, and ordered the disbandment of the army, hoping that by committing
these acts of regal vandalism, the country would fall into turmoil and anarchy, and consequently facilitate his return, on his own terms, by force of arms, or in answer to a plea and an apology. His actions were deemed disgraceful and dangerous behavior.

“The Tories adhered to the principle of hereditary right to the throne as a divine attribute, and absolutely necessary to a stable polity. The Whigs had progressed to the idea of the Crown or throne as a Parliamentary entitlement, a status bestowed by grace and sufferance of both Houses: in the Commons, in the name of the people; in Lords, in the name of the nation, not necessarily the same as the people. The Tories believed that a throne should rule, requiring only tacit recognition by the ruled and deserving obsequious submission to its edicts, imperatives, and pleasures. The Whigs believed that a compact should exist between the king and people, with removal from the throne as a supreme penalty for law-breaking and abuse of that compact.

“The Whig position was an expression of Mr. Locke’s theory of the right relationship between government and the governed. But applied to the political knowledge of the time — ” Proudlocks paused to interject “and this is Mr. Reisdale’s analogy, not my own — this was akin to clothing the elephant in the best haberdashery.”

Everyone at the table chuckled at this, except James Brune.

Proudlocks continued. “And these are my queries: The compact between the king and the people sanctions rebellion against a law-breaking king. But is the compact between Parliament and the people so well-founded and inviolate that it forbids rebellion? If Parliament becomes as abusive as a king, what difference should it make to the abused that the abuser is many-headed, and not single? Are not their liberties being violated by one or the other? If our excellent Constitution is so proof against tyranny, why must these questions be asked, in these troubling times?”

Jack Frake remarked, “Parliament believes that rebellion is sanctioned. That is a one-sided compact, clearly evident in its latest actions.” He smiled at Proudlocks. “Forgive me the interruption, John. Please, continue.”

Proudlocks smiled in answer, then concluded, “Parliament is a legislative body, the king, an executive one. Should that make a difference? Let us consider the charge of treason. If one resists or speaks out against the depredations of royal agents, is that action more or less treasonous than opposing the agents of usurpant Parliamentary legislation? Reason compels me to say they are coequal.”

“Excellent, John,” said Reisdale. He looked around the table. “I did not assist him in the composition of that dissertation, ladies and gentlemen. It is all of his own effort.”

“Bravo, John,” said Jack Frake.

“Well done, sir,” said Hugh Kenrick.

Proudlocks nodded in acknowledgement with a grin. “Thank you, sirs,” he said, and took his seat again next to Reisdale.

The conversation remained on politics, and as it coursed around the table, James Brune sat in speechless shock. He uttered not one word, literally. The nature of the talk left him stunned and blank; he only knew that such talk was unthinkable in London among his own circle.

He glanced at Reverdy; she was sitting and listening to it all with a faint smile. He noted that her eyes lit up somehow when she looked at Hugh. He realized that she and Hugh had reconciled and reunited. What that implied he refused to contemplate.

He choked on his own silence.

“James wished to suborn not only the Constitution and Parliament, but the entire nation,” said Hugh. “Well, Sidney said it first: Absolute monarchy, such as James sought, depends on corruption.”

“It was seven recalcitrant bishops who refused to order the clergy to recite the Declaration of Indulgence, and an infant boy, James’s son, who caused the Revolution of 1688,” said Reisdale. “James wanted an heir, and got one at the last moment. And the bishops, tried and acquitted of seditious libel, were hailed as saviors of the nation.”

“And a Dutch stadtholder and his designs to contain Louis the Fourteenth, who also made the Revolution possible,” said Hugh. “William of Orange was not so much interested in healing English political strife as securing Dutch independence from France. Becoming King of England would obtain that security. Healing the strife was merely a means to his end. A united England would checkmate French designs on the Netherlands. What a piece of statecraft!”

“And the King of France laughed up his sleeve at it all, and did nothing, not even move against the Dutch,” said Reisdale. He added with a chuckle, “That was
his
contribution to the Glorious Revolution.”

“All important factors of the event,” said Hugh, “but none of them fundamental.”

“What was fundamental, then?” broached James Brune.

“A lingering memory of liberty,” answered Hugh, “and a reluctance to
repeat the regicide of the Civil War.”

James Brune noticed an object that rested upright in one corner of the supper room, a furled banner on a staff. He ventured to ask his host, “I recognize the stripes there, Mr. Frake. In the midst of all the extraordinary politicking in this county, were they perhaps purloined from a hapless East Indiaman?”

Jack Frake explained the origins of the banner of the Sons of Liberty.

When his friend was finished, Hugh added, “I believe the lieutenant was as discouraged by our banner as he was by our presence, that day.”

“Discouraged, and confused,” said Reisdale.

Jack addressed the Brunes. “Undoubtedly Hugh has told you of my own origins and my association with a smuggling gang in Cornwall.”

“Yes,” answered James Brune. “That, also, is an extraordinary story.”

“It is the banner that my friends lacked, when they stood up against the Crown.”

Etáin said, “I helped sew that banner.”

The Brunes were then treated to a second telling of the day that Caxton defied the Crown.

When they were finished with dessert, the men repaired to Jack’s library, while Etáin took Reverdy to her music room, which also boasted some shelves of books.

* * *

Etáin asked, “Can you read notes?”

Reverdy replied, “Of course. But you would be surprised at the number of famous singers in London who cannot.”

“I have transcribed much for my harp, and the dulcimer over there. Lately, I converted Mr. Handel’s ‘Dettingen Te Deum,’ and I have the words to it, as well. An uncle in London sends music to my mother, who sends it to me.”

Reverdy said with enthusiasm, “I have heard it in London. It is enthralling.”

“Jack does not care for any of the lyrics to anything I have played. Nor do I. But it is their sense he enjoys, as do I.”

Reverdy asked, “Is there a chorus here, or perhaps a private society of singers?”

“None that I know of. Perhaps one exists in Philadelphia. Certainly,
none about here. If there were, I would know of it.”

Etáin crossed the room to a table on which were stacks of paper bound with string. She showed Reverdy her collection of transcriptions, laboriously studied and written on blank sheets specially printed by the late Wendel Barret. Next to the table was a cabinet that held more music, designed by her husband and built by Moses Topham, Morland’s carpenter.