Taking Liberties (46 page)

Makepeace said: ‘He
has
got something to do with it. He's helping a couple of men to freedom and one of them's black, same as he is.
I'll
ask him.'

‘Blackness is not the question here.'

‘Yes it is,' Makepeace said. ‘In this case it is. He's not your slave anymore, he can make his own choices.'

And she was clear on that. Josh was the argument against those who refused to see that slavery was an evil in itself; the son of a runaway slave, a man who'd fought and suffered for the American cause, gifted, articulate. Who could look at him and believe, like Able Seaman Abell, that his race was not suitable for freedom? With Josh on their side, the abolitionists must triumph and the missing clause in the Declaration of Independence be written in. It was fitting that Tobias be one of the instruments who helped them to do it.

The two women kept an antagonistic silence for the rest of the journey. The Dowager spent some of it wondering if her ability to drive a pair in hand qualified her to handle a coach and four at speed and by night, the rest in hopelessness. Makepeace spent it thinking and thinking as she turned Josh's miniature of Philippa back and forth to catch the light.

As they reached the fingerpost and began the descent to the sea, she said cautiously: ‘How would you like to have your portrait painted?'

‘What does she want, Bates?'

‘Asked for a brief word with you, Captain.'

Captain Stewart looked at the visiting card again and was wary. The fuss this female and John Howard had made over the hospital had cost poor Luscombe his post and he'd be damned if the same happened to him. However, he had to give her a hearing. One did not send away well-connected countesses, even dowagers past their prime.

‘Better show her in, I suppose.'

He waited for the entrance of a beefy aristocratic old Amazon with nothing to do but interfere in other people's business.

The woman who came in was tall and slim, her skin and hair like pearl against the black of her mourning. Though she smiled, there was something tragic about her. ‘You must dread to see me, Captain Stewart; I fear I caused nothing but trouble to your predecessor.'

‘Not at all, your ladyship.'

‘I promise that today's errand concerns nothing for which you need to scold me.'

‘
Flirt
,' the Missus had said, ‘
and if you can't flirt, look pathetic
.'

While he rushed to find her a chair, she looked round the room. It was more bare and businesslike than it had been under Luscombe's aegis; the furniture was Admiralty issue with none of the personal touches with which Captain Luscombe had made it comfortable. Captain Stewart, obviously, was the poorer man. The walls bore nothing more than an amateur portrayal of a frigate and a walnut-framed copy of the good captain's commission—previously they had been adorned by two lush portraits, one of Captain Luscombe, another of his mother. Better and better.

‘Captain, John Howard commands me to congratulate you on the improvement to the hospital. I understand it is now the paradigm for every war prison in the country.'

‘Due to your ladyship's efforts, surely,' Stewart said, cautiously.

‘I was not the instigator, Captain, merely Mr Howard's instrument of concern that it was not what it should be.'

She hoped it sounded as if Howard had bullied her. How like old times to try and manipulate a man by guile and flattery. She was not enjoying it.

Now that Captain Stewart came to think of it, he owed this beautiful woman rather a lot. The hospital had undoubtedly been a scandal under Luscombe and, while he himself hadn't reformed it, he was getting much of the credit for its present efficient running. And if she'd now turned her attention to the issue of exchange, it suited him very well; the sooner he was relieved of a plaguesome crew like the Americans, the better he'd like it.

Now she was congratulating him on reducing the number of escapes; he'd been rather surprised himself at the success of his methods just lately.

It appeared that, while talking to hospital patients, she had heard of a young American prisoner—‘A
negro
, would you think of it, Captain'—with considerable artistic talent. Had even been shown small examples of his work. A Joshua somebody-or-other. It had occurred to her what a pleasing curiosity it might be if the fellow should be allowed to paint her portrait.

‘A present for my son. Reynolds was to have done it but I am settled in Devon and do not wish to make a long journey for sittings. And have you found the local painters of any merit, Captain? Daubers all, I fear.'

A daring request, she knew, and she would abide by any conditions he thought to impose, but it would be
such
a happy reminder of her connection with Millbay, and a sign of what liberality was shown to the prisoners.

‘Moreover . . .' Diana sent up a prayer. ‘. . . should the artist live up to his reputation, I would be most happy to commission a portrait of yourself, Captain, and have it suitably framed.'

Captain Stewart regarded the carrot dangling under his nose and found himself hungry. This woman before him, breeding and good taste in every elegant line, was sufficiently convinced of the negro's talent or she would not be so eager to sit for him. A portrait of himself, in oils and full dress uniform. At no cost. He could hear his reply to visitors:
Yes, rather good, isn't it? Same fella who painted the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole
. . .

He was stern with her. ‘You understand there would have to be restrictions, your ladyship, and we will have a problem with the location . . .'

It took time to make him alight on the now empty cottage but she got him perched on it eventually.

‘There must be a guard present at all times, of course. At all times.'

‘My dear sir, I should be terrified if there were not. I shall bring my manservant with me, if I may.'

 
The north-facing upper room still had stains on its floorboards where dying men had lain but its light was good.

It was also cold. As well as the necessary painting paraphernalia, she and Tobias had brought a hamper of food, a bottle of brandy—most of it for the guard—an extra cloak for herself and firing for the room's tiny hearth. Even so, after an hour or two, being positioned by the window, Josh's hand became unsteady from cold.

The next day—she was staying at the Prince George for the duration—she brought yet another cloak but the militia guard, Corporal Trotter, a man blessed with weighty flesh but no brain that Diana could discern, refused to let Joshua wear it.

‘It is not magic,' she begged him, ‘it won't render him invisible.'

Trotter, however, suspected it might. He had his orders—nothing to be passed to prisoners—so sessions were interrupted while Josh thawed out by the fire.

It took three days before Trotter relaxed and succumbed to brandy, boredom and a post-prandial snooze. Even then they were cautious.

‘What terrible weather,' Diana began, quietly. ‘A farmer's wife I know, a Mrs Hedley, worries that the ground may be too hard to dig. She wonders when the winter sowing can begin.'

Josh looked up, stepped back from the easel, his head on one side, and approached it again. ‘You helpin' this Mrs Hedley some?'

‘She has asked me to advise her, but I know little about farming.'

‘Bad time, ground's mighty hard.'

‘Yes, she wonders when she should bring out the plough. And where.' Lord, how ridiculous; even Trotter would suspect this conversation. She looked at the man, to make sure he slept, and mouthed:
‘Where? When?'

Josh pointed his brush towards the window.
‘That way. Trees.'

Diana leaned forward from her chair and peered; he seemed to be indicating the north wall beyond which she could see treetops. It looked a long way away and there was a great deal of wall.
‘Coach. Waiting.'
She glanced again at the sleeping Trotter and dared to gabble: ‘There is a Frenchman. De Vaubon. He must come in the coach.'

Josh stepped back from the easel, regarded it and made another stroke. ‘Different hut,' he said. ‘Tell him at roll call.'

She wanted to say de Vaubon was still in the hospital for all she knew, but Trotter had stopped snoring and was making chewing motions with a mouth dry from too much brandy. His eyes were still shut.

Josh held up four fingers.
‘Weeks.'

Trotter snorted and woke up.

‘At least,' Josh said out loud.

‘We are discussing farming, Corporal,' Diana said. ‘I suppose farmers know when to start ploughing but those with inexperience must need someone to tell them, don't you think?'

‘Don't care, I'm a coffin-maker,' Trotter said. ‘Light's going, Burke. Back to the pen.'

 
‘Another month?' Makepeace yelped.

‘At
least
, apparently. The sort of tunnelling they are doing can hardly be an exact science.'

‘Couldn't you have stayed longer, found out more?'

‘No, I could not,' Diana said. ‘Captain Stewart is eager for his own portrait and kept arriving to find out how Josh was coming along. What I did do was suggest that Josh work on the hands and most of the dress without my being there, so I have an excuse for returning to collect the finished product.'

Josh himself could have spun out the sittings more by slowing his work but he had not, he would go at his own pace or not at all.

She had not found him particularly amiable or willing to please, qualities she had always ascribed to his race. It had come as a shock to be sharply berated by a black man—she had shifted her pose—but she had recognized the dedication of a true artist. While he'd worked he had been elsewhere than in a nasty little room, inhabiting a dimension of light and shade that, for him, was a greater escape than any.

The Dowager had wondered if that was why Josh had survived the Black Hole when Forrest Grayle had not; Grayle had been unable to live without physical freedom, Josh carried his own freedom in his mind's eye.

She had come to admire him. More than that, looking at the young man day after day, the sheen of light on the mattness of his skin had begun to please her. Before, she had regarded blackness as an unfortunate pigmentation cursing those who had it; now she saw it could be beautiful.

Her own painted face, when he eventually allowed her to see it, had been not altogether a pleasant surprise. ‘I look like Leda after the swan left her in the lurch.'

‘Swan's right,' Josh had said. ‘Who's Leda?'

‘Am I so tragic?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Brave, too, though.'

Admittedly, the portrait had been a subterfuge but she had hoped, as one did, that she would appear to advantage. With that in mind, she had composed her features in the (she hoped) noble mask it had worn for thirty-nine years, but the countenance on the canvas had something of the heart-wrenching endurance with which Josh had endowed his drawing of Lieutenant Grayle.

She
must
smile more.

Somewhat miffed, she'd said: ‘Well, young man, I hope you will flatter Captain Stewart.'

Josh had shrugged. ‘I paint what I see.'

 
There was nothing they could do now but wait, a condition made harder for Makepeace and the village women by the fact that
Lark
and
Three Cousins
were overdue.

Lanterns and rushlights shone out each night to an empty cove. Out at sea, every passing vessel carried expectation on its prow and disappointment in its wake. In their dreams they began to be haunted by cries for help and to see bodies twisting through water in a bubbling downward spiral.

A violent south-easterly wind swept along the cliffs as if trying to find the village, huddled in its cleft like a leveret in a forme, to sweep it away. It took off one of the Pomeroy's chimneys and brought Mrs Welland's henhouse down around her poultry's ears.

It was a relief. Rachel Gurney said: ‘Explains it, that does. They wouldn't've set out in this. Blow 'em to China, this would.'

But when, after two days, the storm dropped and its place taken by a flat, viciously cold calm and still the cove remained empty day after day, there was no excuse.

‘Perhaps their rigging's frozen,' Makepeace attempted. ‘It's icy enough.'

Rachel's mouth was tight. ‘P'rhaps,' she said.

Makepeace went up to T'Gallants to huddle by the Dowager's fire. ‘It's terrible, I know,' she said, ‘but I keep praying that if they've gone down, they didn't have Andra aboard.'

‘That's understandable.' Diana herself was selfishly thanking God that de Vaubon was on dry land. But in what condition? He'd be so cold. She didn't know if he was alive; might never know if he were dead.

‘Talk to me,' she said. ‘Tell me about Andra.'

Hearing about Makepeace's marriage was a diversion from anxiety; it was so mystically different from her own. Both her husbands had made the Missus happy so that, to Diana, stories about them were like tales from a foreign country.

Makepeace never seemed to compare the two; the years with Philip Dapifer had been one thing, the life with Andra Hedley another, both different, both wondrous. The only common factor, as far as Diana could judge, was that each husband had allowed Makepeace a freedom of thought and action that her own wouldn't have tolerated. ‘He allowed you to do that?' she would say about one venture or another. ‘Didn't he mind?'

The Dowager never talked about her own marriage, but her questions were as revealing to Makepeace as if she had. Yon Aymer was a proper bastard, she thought. I'd have kicked him in his strawberry leaves. She didn't think the son was much better. She enquired after him.