Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (15 page)

The previous autumn Lord and Lady Kingsclere came on a visit to Maryiot Cells. These visits were odious to Barbara. Henrietta Kingsclere's careless patronage of her young sister-in-law had sharpened to jealous distrust as she had seen Barbara develop into a woman of unusual attractions. Accustomed to being the beauty of the family, Barbara's looks, so different from her own, affronted her. Though in many ways a stupid woman, she sensed that something vital, even violent, throbbed behind Barbara's composed manner. She lost no opportunity to assert her superiority over Barbara: her handsome husband, her two pretty young sons, above all her gay and fashionable life at Court – these were all weapons with which to daunt the younger woman. It would have flattered her to feel that Barbara envied her – on this basis they could have become friends – but Barbara's green eyes were insolent.

Henrietta was as enthusiastic a gambler as Barbara, and at the card table their rivalry found fevered expression. More often than not Barbara was the winner, but fortune was against her this visit. With silent chagrin she saw her sister-in-law win night after night. Her own losses mounted to an alarming degree, but pride absolutely forbade her either to abstain from play or to play for lesser stakes.

It was the last evening of the Kingscleres' stay. The family party gathered in the withdrawing-room, where tea was served with some solemnity in delicate China dishes. (Sir Ralph considered it a base unworthy Indian practice and unbecoming to a Christian family, but the ladies insisted.)
Then they settled down for their usual parlour game. This evening it was ‘I love my love with an A',
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the ladies sitting on a carpet in the centre of the room. Henrietta Kingsclere's supercilious yawns indicated her boredom at this tepid domestic version of a game that, played in fashionable circles, was made the excuse for the most bawdy wit and daring impropriety. Needlework and music filled up the interval till supper, after which the servants came with torches to light the older ladies to their rooms. (Paulina had disappeared long since into the library.) Sir Ralph, who had been snoring in his velvet-covered chair, followed their example. Lord Kingsclere, after strumming on a cittern,
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declared that he was also for bed.

Sunset was the accustomed hour for the Skelton household to retire to rest, but for Barbara, Henrietta and her younger brother, Roger Skelton, who was also down from London, the real business of the day – their game of ombre
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– had yet to begin.

Cards, wine and candles were brought, the gilded leather curtains drawn, a table set by the fire which crackled in the vast, elaborately carved stone fireplace (for it was late September and growing chill). Except for this pool of mingled fire and candlelight the withdrawing-room was in shadow; the richly panelled walls with their tapestry hangings and the ceiling with its pendant plaster work seemed, in the dim light, to have a life of their own as mysterious and luxuriant as a forest.

The firelight shone rosily on Barbara's pearl-coloured satin gown, drew an answering glow from the beautiful ruby heart which she wore round her neck. The fashionable
game of ombre was her favourite. To play it skilfully required a great deal of application, and this was where she scored over Henrietta who, for all her expertness, was easily distracted, joining in overheard snatches of conversation or picking up her pet spaniel to coo over it. It pleased Barbara particularly when it fell to her lot to be ombre – the solo player against whom the other two players combined. To think only of her own concerns and strive for herself alone suited her disposition exactly. She felt confident that this evening she would recuperate herself for her recent losses. It was indeed imperative that she should win, if she was to avoid the mortification of having to confess to Sir Ralph and beg him to settle her debts. She knew him well enough to know that he would do so, but only on condition that she abstained from deep play in future. Intolerable thought. The feeling that much depended on her success tonight, added to her animosity towards Henrietta, made her tingle with a nervous and not unpleasurable excitement. Roger Skelton, eager as a ferret himself, gave his sister-in-law a shrewd look.

For the first hour or so it seemed as though her luck had indeed turned. The pile of counters before her increased slowly but steadily. Growing confident and impatient, Barbara proposed that they should double the stakes. Roger Skelton agreed with a shrug of his shoulders; Henrietta, who was looking flushed, with a curt nod.

And as though the suggestion had snapped the tenuous glittering thread of her good fortune Barbara, from that moment, began to lose. And losing, she felt her concentration slipping from her. Strive as she might she
could not thrust the thought of tomorrow's reckoning out of her mind. Already she owed her sister-in-law more than she could easily afford. This night's doing, unless she could retrieve herself, would land her in serious money difficulties for the first time in her gaming career. To confess her predicament to Henrietta, and to ask for a few months' grace on the grounds of their relationship was unthinkable. There was not a woman in the kingdom to whom she could bear less to be beholden than Henrietta Kingsclere.

With an air of graceful unconcern, which was the exact antithesis of the hot perturbation within her, she said, ‘I do very ill tonight. You must give me the opportunity to recover myself a little, Henrietta, or I shall have to go very meanly – if not barefoot! – for the rest of the year!'

‘All the opportunity you wish, dear Bab. It is only midnight, and in London that is when we begin to wake up. Lord! if I were in town tonight I suppose I should be at Whitehall, and dancing like mad till six or seven in the morning.'

Barbara rose, fetched fresh candles from a side table, and replenished the wine glasses. These candles had burnt low, the untended fire had smouldered into embers, before Barbara, with a little gesture of defeat, admitted herself at the end of her resources. Her face was pale, the dark ringlets lay damp on her forehead, but her hands were steady and her mouth firm. Roger Skelton, glancing at her, thought, ‘She bears her losses with a pretty indifference, the jade!' He had tried to fondle his brother's wife soon after her marriage, and had been repulsed, but he could admire an undaunted gamester.

It was now that Henrietta made the remark that was to prove her – and in a far wider sense, Barbara's – undoing. In a tone of sneering jocularity she said, ‘I declare, Roger, that it was cruel of seasoned gamesters like ourselves to get poor Barbara into this lamentable pickle. But no doubt our worthy brother will thank us for it, if it gives her a disgust of gaming and teaches her to be content with her housekeeping and her needle.' The colour sprang into Barbara's cheeks. She opened her eyes wide and fixed them on her sister-in-law with a look of undisguised spite. Then she pulled the gold chain with its ruby pendant over her head and threw it down on the table.

‘I will play you for this. It is a jewel of the greatest brilliance and rarity – worth all your paltry gains put together.'

Henrietta bit her lips. She said, ‘Well, Roger, it seems that Barbara has not learnt her lesson yet. Shall we take her on?'

Roger's eyes glistened. ‘As you wish.'

Henrietta said, ‘Very well, Barbara. We accept the challenge. How many games shall we play?'

Barbara said fiercely, ‘I will stake it on a single game.'

Better to know quickly what was in store for her. As Roger dealt the cards Barbara, her hands clenched on her lap, prayed, ‘God, if you make me win I shall forgive You for my mother's death.'

She was ombre and she played as though her life depended on it. She lost.

There was a moment's silence. Roger, shuffling the cards nervously, glanced at Barbara. Her heavily-lidded eyes gleamed green between their long lashes, her delicate nostrils quivered. The curious, rather feline proportions
of her face were more than ever noticeable. He thought inconsequently, ‘She has a dangerous look.'

The ruby heart lay like a gout of blood on the table. Henrietta Kingsclere put out her plump hand and took it.

‘Yes, it is a pretty jewel. I shall wear it when next I go to Court. And if you ever have a daughter, Barbara, I might leave it to her in my will, provided that she is a dutiful niece to me and that I have no girl of my own. It was your mother's jewel, was it not?'

Barbara nodded. She could not speak. She was suffocating with remorse and rage. She cried wildly to herself, ‘Mother! never mind. I swear I will get it back!'

Henrietta yawned, showing a large amount of teeth and pink mouth. ‘Thank heaven, I can lie abed tomorrow. My lord leaves for town early in the coach, for he has business with the Privy Council, but I shall not set out to the Forresters' till the afternoon. I shall lie at Ischam for two days and then return to London after sunset on Friday, for they have a supper party for me that evening. I shall be their most considerable guest, and I would not disappoint the good folk for the world.'

Henrietta was the kind of person who thought that all her arrangements, however trivial, must be of as much interest to other people as they were to herself.

Barbara said softly, ‘Take heed that St Nicholas's clerks
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do not take my – your ruby from you. The Fenny Stratford road is famed for highwaymen.'

And as she made the casual remark the thought flamed up in her mind, ‘Why not?'

Why not? It was being done most days and most nights on all the roads of England. Nothing was needed but
a horse, a pistol and a bold heart. And in this case, a suit of man's attire. But in this large household that would be easy to procure. She was tall for a woman, slender but well-built. Her hands? They could be hidden in gloves. Her voice? It was naturally low-pitched. She could disguise it sufficiently. Her thoughts raced on, wildly elated. At the best it would be a novel experience, a delicious, secret triumph – would that pink and white jelly scream, weep or faint in a crisis? At the worst it could be passed off as a prank. But there would be no worst. She felt an extraordinary sense of confidence and pleasure surge through her. She felt capable of everything – mad to put her crazy, beautiful idea into execution.

She rose, smoothed out her satin skirt, and going to the window pulled the heavy curtains apart.

She said gaily. ‘Why, it is dawn.'

Now, on this March day, as she drew the brightly coloured skeins of silk from the cabinet drawer, she recalled with a sharp amusement and satisfaction the night when she had robbed Henrietta Kingsclere.

How she had smiled at her own unfamiliar reflection as she dressed herself behind locked doors for the night's adventure, telling herself that she made a very pretty young man, in the long skirted coat and breeches of dark cloth that she had purloined from the big chest where Hogarth the steward kept the men-servants' spare suits. Beneath the large, flat-brimmed beaver hat her face was provocatively feminine. But a mask would remedy that. The high, spurred
boots, the heavy gauntlet gloves, the leather belt and pistol holster – what a piquant change from muffs, lace caps and painted fans!

She drew the loaded pistol from the holster and examined it carefully. Her elder brother − dead now these seven years − had amused himself one holiday, by teaching her something of the use of firearms. How he would have stared – laughed too, for poor Charles was of a reckless and merry humour – if he could have foreseen to what use his pretty little sister would put his tuition!

She had set out after dark, riding her own bay horse, her Fleury. The night was windy, chill, full of restless noise and the movement of swaying branches. The moon shone clear and high then, like a masked desperado, hid itself behind the scudding clouds. Barbara had known this countryside since childhood. As she trotted along the narrow, deeply rutted lanes, she passed familiar landmarks, a farmhouse with its thatched roof and barns, filled now with the summer's yield of grain, crouching snugly among the trees like an old farm dog asleep, a willow-fringed pond by the roadside, then the tall wrought-iron gates of a neighbouring domain, and now she had ridden quickly through a sleeping village. The little huddled cottages with their overhanging eaves had ignored her passing. In one tiny window only a rushlight shone – some sick person or woman in labour no doubt – a dog had broken out barking. She had met no one – neither watch nor beggar – and indeed she had not far to go.

The countryside had seemed so forsaken that, as she waited in the little coppice that she had selected as her hiding place, it seemed to her impossible that any
human being should come that way. She had small fear of intercepting the wrong vehicle. This road was little used, being nothing more than a side lane, but the most convenient way from Ischam Park and village to the main St Albans road. But supposing Henrietta had decided to lie at Ischam for another night? Supposing something had gone wrong with her chariot – a wheel off or a horse lamed – and she had been obliged to turn back? The mere idea of being outwitted, however unconsciously, by her enemy, made Barbara clench her teeth.