The Love Child (27 page)

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I sat. I felt hypnotized by those cruel golden eyes with the long, almost feminine lashes and the beautifully marked golden brows.

“You cheated me …in Venice,” he went on. “That brute came and snatched you from me. If you had only come to me then I should have so delighted you that we should have been happy together. But I lost you, and ever since I have thought of you. Then I saw you today and I knew your father was here. I can save him. I can bring many favours to people who seek them. My family is an influential one. I will save your father. I promise you … but I need my reward.”

“And your reward is …”

“You.” He leaned forward and spoke almost breathlessly. “I will send a carriage for you at sundown. You will be brought to my house. You will stay with me until the dawn. During that time you will be my beloved little slave. You will be mine entirely, denying me nothing, wishing only to serve me.”

“I think you are despicable. You are in a position-so you say-to save a man’s life, and you ask payment for that!”

“Oh, come, you are a young woman who would be too proud to accept charity. You would want to pay your debts, would you not?”

“I hate you.”

“That may be, but it is not a question of your emotions, but of mine. I am the one who has to be paid.”

“It… is not possible,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “So you will let your father die?”

I looked at him wretchedly. “Is there nothing else? … We could pay.”

“I need money. I always need money. They say I am rather extravagant. But in this case there is something I want more, and I am afraid it is the price for this particular service.”

“How could it be brought about … my father’s release, I mean?”

“I would see that he walked into the inn on the day that followed.”

“Can you be sure?”

He nodded.

“But how can
be sure?”p>

“It would be a gamble,” he said.

“Then I shall have to find some other means.”

“How? What will you do?”

“I will find some way.”

“There is not much time. Do you propose to seek out the judge 173

and say, ‘Fair sir, I offer you this … or that … for my father’s life?’ I warn you his price might be the same as mine.”

I felt dizzy. I kept thinking of my father and imagined him, swinging on a rope …

or worse still. I thought of my mother and I realized how dear they both were to me-he no less than she was-and that I had wanted my father’s love all my life. I had longed to shine in his eyes; I had wanted him to be proud of me and his indifference to me had not really changed my feelings towards him. Perhaps it had made me more eager for his approval.

“What if you do not keep your part of the bargain?” I asked.

“I give you my word that I shall. I can and I will do it.”

“How can I trust you?”

“You can’t be sure, can you? You will have to take that chance. I am not, as you may have guessed, noted for my virtue, but I have a deserved reputation for paying my gambling debts. When I give a promise to pay I consider it a point of honour to do so.”

“Honour. You talk of honour?”

“Honour of a sort. We all have our standards, you know. Well, What is it to be?”

I was silent. I could not bear to look at him. But even while I hesitated I knew I had to save my father.

“I will send a carriage for you at dusk,” he said. “It will bring you back the following morning. The next day you will be able to return with your parents.”

I felt numb. I had prayed for a solution, and here it was offered to me, but at what a price!

He was regarding me with glittering eyes. I thought of the first time I had seen him hi St. Mark’s Square and how this had really grown out of my love for Jocelyn and had begun when I discovered him in the haunted flower garden.

I turned and hurried from the room.

My mother’s fever had not abated and the doctor came again.

“How ill is she?” I asked. “Is there not something that can be done?”

“What she needs is her husband safe beside her.”

I thought: Everything is telling me that I must do this. I could save them both.

Surely what happened to me was nothing compared with their future happiness. I must save them both, no matter what it cost me.

I hated this man with an intensity I had never felt before. It was in 174

his power to save my parents, yet to do so he insisted on my utter humiliation. One moment I wished I had never seen him, and then I remembered that if I had not there might not have been even this opportunity of saving my father.

I thought of the tangled web of my life and how one event was so closely interwoven with another. I tried to think of anything but the coming night.

For one thing I was thankful. There would have to be no explanation to my mother.

She would sleep deeply through the night and if she needed anything there was a bell rope by the bed which would bring one of the serving maids to her. I trusted she would not wake and find me missing.

There seemed no fear of that. The doctor had given her a potion which he said would make her sleep, for forgetfuhiess was what she needed more than anything.

So, as the shadows were falling I put on my cloak and went down to the inn parlour to wait.

I did not wait long. A liveried servant came asking for me, and there was the carriage waiting to take me to my doom.

We rode through the streets of that old city which had been built hundreds of years before when the Romans came to Britain. The streets were full of strangers and there were soldiers everywhere. It was a town of roistering and tragedy, for many a Dorset man would come to a sad end within the next few days. Through the town we went, past the almshouses known as Nappers Mite, past the grammar school founded by Queen Elizabeth, and the old church with its tower which was two hundred years old.

I saw these things as though in a dream. If I save my father, I thought, I shall never want to see this place again. Then I was praying silently for help to get me through this night.

On the edge of the town was a mansion. We turned in at the gates and went up the drive. The house loomed before us-sinister, I thought, like an enchanted dwelling conjured up by evil spirits.

I tried to appear calm as I stepped down and entered the hall.

It was not unlike our hall at Eversleigh-the high vaulted roof, the long refectory table with the pewter utensils on it, the swords and halberds hanging on the wall-a typical baronial mansion.

A woman came forward. She was rotund, middle-aged and heavily painted, with a patch on her cheek and another on her temple.

“We are waiting for you, mistress,” she said. “Please follow me.”

With a heavily beating heart and a warning within me to be pre-175

pared for anything terrible and strange which might happen to me, I followed her up a staircase lined with family portraits.

We went along a gallery to a door. I was taken into a room at the end of which was a dais; curtains were half drawn across this.

The curtains were then pulled right back and a serving girl with her sleeves rolled up was waiting there. There was a hip bath and two tall pewter jugs from which rose scented steam. I guessed they contained hot water.

“I am ready, mistress,” said the maid.

The woman who had brought me in nodded. “Fill the bath,” she said; and to me: “Take off your clothes.”

I said: “I don’t understand.”

“You are here to obey orders,” said the woman with a smile, which was the first of the humiliations I was to suffer that night. I saw her in the role for which she was ideally suited; she was a pander, a procuress. I had heard of these matters.

The maid had filled the bath and turned to me giggling. I felt an impulse to turn and run. Then horrible images came into my mind. My father … my mother …

And I knew then that whatever happened to me I must accept because it would be a means of saving them from tragedy.

Time passes. It will be over, I promised myself. Whatever it is I must bear it.

“Come, my dear,” said the woman. She had a deep, hoarse voice like a man’s. “We have not all night.” She laughed and the maid laughed with her.

“There is no need for a bath,” I said. “I am clean.”

“This is the way it is wanted. Are you ashamed to take off your clothes? Are you deformed or something? Oh, come, you look pretty enough to me. Now let us undo these buttons … quietly, gently. We don’t want to pull them off, do we?”

So I was stripped of my clothes.

“Quite commendable,” said the woman. The maid continued to giggle.

I stepped into the bath and washed myself.

The maid stood by with a big towel with which she dried me while the woman stood by smiling.

When I was dry she brought out a bottle of lotion which was rubbed into my skin.

It smelt of musk and sandalwood which I had noticed before and reminded me of Beaumont Granville. The scent was mingled with that of roses.

“And now,” said the woman, who was growing more and more 176

odious to me with every passing moment, “one which is to be especially for you. He has chosen for you the rose. He likes different ones for different people.” She rubbed another lotion into my arms and about my neck.

“There,” she murmured, “that will please, I have no doubt.” She turned to the maid.

“The robe.”

It was wrapped about me. It was a cloak of fine silk-pale pink with black roses embroidered on it.

“There! Now let us go. My lord is impatient.”

I felt as though I had been brought into some eastern harem. The whole procedure was more hideously distasteful to me than anything I had ever known. I was trying hard not to think of what lay before me.

I followed the woman up another flight of stairs; she knocked on a door, pushed it open and led me in.

She left me there and went out, shutting the door behind her.

He came forward. He was wearing a cloak not unlike my own. The smell of musk and sandalwood was strong.

He took my hand and kissed it.

“I knew you would come. Have they treated you well?”

“Humiliatingly.”

He laughed. “It is simply the way in which you regard these matters. They did not ill-treat you?”

“Only insult me. But that was on your orders, wasn’t it?”

“I am a great believer in the bath,” he said. “And I have studied perfumes. I make my own, you know. Do you like the rose?”

“I do not like anything I find here.”

“There is one thing you have to remember about our little adventure. You must please me.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “I know that.”

“That is what you have come here to do. You must not be upset because you have taken a bath and been anointed. Tonight is going to be one you will never forget.”

“That is something I can be sure of, although I shall do my best to put it out of my mind as soon as it is over.”

“Don’t talk of its being over when it is only just beginning.”

“Will you swear that you will save my father?”

“I have given my word. I told you, did I not, that I pay my debts? I promise you that if you give me what I want I shall give you what you want. Have no fear of that.

I will tell you that I already have the matter in hand. Your father has been removed to a small room in the prison. He will spend the night there. In the morning, if you are good

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to me, the door of that room shall be unlocked and he shall go forth a free man.

I have put our plan into action so far.”

“You must have great power and influence with this man who is murdering those men and women whose only fault was that they supported the losing side.”

He put his fingers to my lips. “You talk too freely. You must be careful, you know.

We want you and your parents to be riding home within the week, don’t we?”

“Yes,” I said, “more than anything I want that.”

“Very well. You have come here to me. I appreciate that. Virtue in ladies is to be admired-but not above all things, eh? Tonight is mine. You belong to me tonight.

. . completely. That is understood, is it not?”

“In exchange for my father’s life, yes.”

“You shall be paid for your services, never fear. Come close to me. How delightful you smell. I chose the rose for you to mingle with the musk. It’s a clever idea really.

You are an attractive creature, Priscilla. I like your name. It is a prim name, you know. Primness can be very attractive as long as the owner of it knows when to discard it. You are aware of that, I am sure. First I am going to show you some of my pictures.

I am an artist, you must realize. I am a man of great talent. There are many things I might have done if I had not been born a gentleman with no compulsion to do anything.

I can blend my perfumes. I might have set up shop and supplied the Court. Scents to delight ladies in their boudoirs; scents to disguise evil odours, and there are plenty of those in the streets. Scents to titillate the senses and to arouse the passions of jaded gentlemen. Then I am an artist. I shall show you my pictures now.

Come with me.”

The evening was taking an unexpected turn. I had not been prepared for these preliminaries.

Although I was aware of the lust in him and I knew what the climax must be, I could not understand why all this cruel dallying was taking place beforehand.

There was a room leading from this one and he took me through to it. It was a small room and the walls were lined with pictures. He lighted candles and led me to the wall. There were drawings of women, all naked and in various positions which showed thek physical differences clearly,

“Ladies I have loved,” he said. “I sketch them. You must admit there is a good deal of the artist in me.”

“I suppose so,” I said turning away.

“You would be surprised what a good aid they are to the memory. I come to this room and relive the hours I spent with each of these.”

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“An occupation which doubtless gives you some gratification.”

“A great deal. You see this space on the wall.”