The Twisted Sword (9 page)

He told himself it didn't matter. It was no longer of the slightest importance to him what any of the shabby, pretentious Poldarks were up to. All rivalry had properly died with the death of Elizabeth. Chance encounters since then had been few and, if tautly hostile - particularly that encounter at Trenwith when Geoffrey Charles was showing off his Spanish wife - had led to nothing, could lead to nothing. It was a chapter ended, a door banged shut. So why this black anger at an entry in The Times! He seldom glanced at the Court news. He read the parliamentary reports thoroughly to keep himself up to date - it was easier than going up to the House himself: the tiresome trip to Westminster was one he was becoming less and less inclined to undertake. Then he would read the shipping news; then the foreign news, and would glance at the rest of the paper to see if there was anything on the movements of the markets. But just by chance his eyes glimpsed a name; then he read it. 'The Prince Regent has graciously bestowed a baronetcy upon Captain Ross Vennor Poldark, of Nampara in the county of Cornwall.' Just that. Just three lines. It was the baronetcy that stuck in George's crop most, elevating his old enemy above the mere knights, ensuring that the title would go on. There had been a time not so long ago when George himself had thought to pull what parliamentary strings he could to gain the same title for himself; but since his bitter, irreconcilable quarrel with Valentine he had lost interest. The thought of Valentine inheriting anything from him would have made him sick. If only little Ursula could have come in for it ... Ursula should have all. He wondered savagely what influence Ross had been able to exert on Liverpool. Those trumpery little trips he took abroad might look good on paper but were in fact of minimal importance. No government in its right mind would pretend they deserved any recognition. Of course Ross had for a long time been a toady to Canning, and though Canning was now a thousand miles away lording it over the Portuguese in Lisbon, he probably still had influence in the right places. Two or three of his cronies had received awards and sinecures last year. Anyway it was done and one had to live with it. But George knew from his own experience what a title meant to ordinary folk, especially in Cornwall, and it was gall and wormwood to think of that arrogant, prejudiced squireen returning here with his servant-girl wife. Insufferable. At this time of year Harriet hardly opened The Times, and he did not feel inclined to tell her. Let her find out in due course. In any case if he told her she would only laugh. She might even have the lack of taste and tact to show her pleasure. He had married Harriet long years after Elizabeth's death, and she had never become involved in the feud. She pretended to like Ross Poldark - she had said once, 'He looks the sort of man who if he ever draws his sword will throw away the scabbard' - but this was probably chiefly to annoy her husband. She had even danced with Poldark at that Trenwith party. She refused to accept her husband's judgement, never attempted to put herself in his place, to try to understand the causes of the enduring enmity.

Of course she might well pick up The Times today, for it was snowing and hunting was off. No doubt she would have done so, but she was distracted to a ludicrous degree because one of her boarhounds was missing. Pollux - he thought it was Pollux - had come home yesterday, dirty and dishevelled and scratched about the mouth and paws as if he had been trying to get through wire. But Castor had not come home at all. It was very rare for the dogs to stray far from the house - they were gentle creatures in spite of their great size - and although given full liberty hardly ever took advantage of it. But - and this was the only circumstance which gave George a twist of amusement -- there had been a bitch on heat somewhere and they had gone off on a long chase. Forgetting their duties, their fealty to their indulgent mistress. Ha, thought George, and would have laughed in her face if he had dared: so much for loyalty when a bitch is loose. His relationship with his wife had not improved over the last year. It was not so much that they outwardly quarrelled but that she took less notice than ever of what he said. Of course this had been true in a sense ever since their marriage, but she was becoming, he thought, less and less concerned to put a pleasant and humorous face on it. She lived in his house, took his money - for she had none of her own (three hundred pounds a year he had discovered by devious means) - and did precisely what she liked. She still accepted him into her bed occasionally, and this was still an earth-stirring experience for him; he would come down next morning ready in his grudging way to forgive and forget a lot, and she would have slipped back into her detached, impersonal, aristocratic indifference. The woman of the night was gone - a woman to whom he would have given a great deal - and in her place was the sister of the Duke of Leeds. Indeed, he thought with mounting annoyance today, she would probably have betrayed less anxiety if he had gone missing, not a damned dribbling lolloping great boarhound.

She had been out all morning with a search party but condescended to come in to dinner and swallow a few moody mouthfuls. They had gone down to the River Fal, she said, and as far as Restronguet Creek. Another party had covered the area of Kea, a third Perranwell. (George realized why the house had seemed so empty of servants and the dinner half cold.) Pollux, she said, had been completely useless; dogs couldn't follow a scent in snow.

'It should thaw by tomorrow,' George said.

'Tomorrow is likely to be too late.'

He saw she was in no mood to be consoled so gave up his attempt at consolation. Instead, eating his venison pie with sweet sauce, he occupied his mind with matters nearer to his heart such as a possible change in one of the parliamentary members in his rotten borough of St Michael Colleton had become impossible and pressure must be put upon him to resign; such as the knowledge of the figures for Wheal Spinster where, after a lean two years when part of the mine had been closed, a fine new lode had been sprung, promising high grade copper; such as the fact that his granite quarries above Penryn were turning in a handy profit; such as the fact that he greatly missed little Ursula who was in her first term at Mrs Hemple's; he would have been in Truro today to greet her when she came home from school, but for the snow.

'If you please, ma'am,' said Smallwood, appearing suddenly in the doorway. Smallwood was a groom and it was on George's tongue to order him out of a room in which he was not normally permitted to appear; but clearly this was a moment of some special importance. Smallwood's ginger hair was speckled with unmelted snow, and he was not addressing his master. Yes?' snapped Harriet. 'Is there news?'

'I think he've been found, ma'am.'

'What? Where?' Getting up, her chair rocked back on its legs.

'They've brought 'im to the side door, ma'am. A lady and a servant. I think he's...'

Harriet was out and striding through the rooms to the kitchen. At the door, surrounded by other servants, were two horses. Dismounting from one was Clowance, scarcely recognizable among the mud and snow and bloodstains. Slung over the other horse, which Music had been leading, was the great dog, half open bloodshot eyes, very crestfallen and sorry for himself, tongue lolling, a front leg tied and bandaged.

'Careful!' Clowance was saying. 'Easy now. Don't let him fall. Two come this side, two the other ... Oh, good-day to you, Harriet. We have brought back Castor. It is Castor, I think? We found him in a trap in the woods some miles up the valley. I think he will be well enough if he gets a good meal.'

They had been in Paris two weeks. To the opera with Brigadier and Mme Rougiet; to the Tivoli Gardens with Lieutenant Havergal; to a soiree at the Duchess of Orleans'; and to a ball given by the Due de Gramont, who spoke English without an accent and was a captain in the 10th Hussars. They had been to the Louvre, admiring the many masterpieces that Napoleon had brought there. They had ridden up the Avenue des Tuileries as far as the Place du Carrousel and seen the bronze horses stolen from St Mark's, Venice, still waiting to be placed on top of the unfinished Arc de Triomphe. Ross had spent two nights with the 2nd Army Corps at Auxerre as a guest of Brigadier Rougiet and had twice written despatches home. They had met Mile de la Blache and supped with her and her brother at Tortoni's. Uncertain whether to open old wounds, but feeling the moral compulsion of that long-made promise, Ross had given her the ring Charles de Sombreuil had left him to give to her twenty years ago. Jodie's eyes had filled with tears but she thanked him and put it on her finger where it was dwarfed by other rings.

'After I had heard about Charles I am badly broken. I stayed in England two more years. Then I left my brother at school in England and went to stay with an aunt in Vienna. There I met Baron Ettmayer and a year later I married him. He is attached to the Court. When he died in 1806 I moved back to Paris but as Baroness Ettmayer and made no attempt to claim my family's property. For eight years ... I suppose I can tell them now, Henri?'

'Assuredly.'

'For eight years I have acted as une espionne. Reporting to King Louis in England, and sometimes to members of your government, events in Paris, sentiment in Paris, and what military and naval information I could glean.'

'Often I trembled for her,' said Colonel de la Blache.

'For if she had been discovered she would have been shot. Do you know what espionne means, Lady Poldark?'

'I can guess,' said Demelza.

'If you say you wish to learn French,' said Mile de la Blache, 'pray come and visit me often. I have a very easy way, by talk, by conversation, much better than any teacher!'

"Thank you.'

She had changed a lot from the day of that one meeting at Trelissick. She was now red-haired instead of dark and was more brittle in manner; she had tired eyelids and the lines of living. It was said she had been the mistress of one of Napoleon's most gifted generals. Yet she was so open and frank that it was hard to see her in a world of concealment and deception.

'When Bonaparte was deposed, and there is a chance of some of our property to be restored I return to my nom de demoiselle, for it is then the family name which matters. And so I have become unmarried again! And now we have about half our property restored, which is more than the King has managed for many of his subjects. Bless him!'

'Amen,' said Henri. Demelza said: 'Did you stay in England, Colonel? Your accent is - is parfait'

They all laughed.

'I stayed in England for ten years, Lady Poldark. I stayed for ten years, but then I too went to Austria and later fought in the Netherlands - on the side of England, believe it or not! - but for three years, the last three years, I remained at Hartwell with the King, and came over with him as part of his personal bodyguard. It was, for me, a very frustrating time, for there was so little to do. I was young and ambitious. Dancing attendance at a nonexistent Court is not an ideal way to occupy one's most vigorous years.'

'And now?' said Ross, knowing pretty well already.

'I am still one of the Garde du Corps to the King; when not on duty in the palace I am an artillery colonel at the barracks. When the King returned to his throne he wished to make me a general but there were many other and older men expecting favours and I chose to refuse. That of course is part of the ill-feeling in Paris today. The King has so many obligations to repay, often to men who have spent the whole of twenty years in exile with him, and seen little of war; yet he owes them much and must promote them to positions of authority while much of Bonaparte's great Imperial Guard is disbanded. One cannot be surprised at disaffection.'

'It will pass,' said Jodie. 'Time will allow the passions and the jealousies to cool.' She smiled at Demelza. Ross thought of the conversation he had had with Brigadier Rougiet and two other officers at Auxerre. The second of these men, a grizzled colonel, had said:

'These people who have come to take over now, sir, they are attempting to dig up a corpse buried for a quarter of a century! They expect to live as they lived in 1790! They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The revolution might not have taken place. Very well, accepted, there were many cruel outrages committed in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity, but there was a great new ideal born with it all. When Bonaparte became Emperor he did not try to put the clock back - rather he built on what was good, established his own code of justice, stabilized a rule of law and common fealty - that was why we fought for him so well and so long! But these royalists, with their endless train of rouged and powdered countesses and duchesses and little princelings - they are arrogant, insolent, self-seeking! Wherever they go they make themselves hated. They are no longer France! They died with Louis the Sixteenth!'

The other was a quieter man but a general. He said:

'Last month I was at a reception given by the King. Marshal Ney was present, with his wife - who is now herself a duchess because the marshal was created a duke. But I saw her deliberately snubbed and cold-shouldered by these old aristocrats. I think Mme Ney was almost in tears!'

After a silence Ross had said almost what Jodie de la Blache said three days later: 'Perhaps it is all too new. There have been rights and wrongs on both sides. Time may help everyone to adjust to the new circumstances.'

No one replied to this. Then Rougiet made an effort and said: 'I believe the King is doing his best for the army. Arrears of pay have been made up. Most of the cavalry regiments have been remounted. Fresh supplies of clothing and arms are being issued. He said only the other day to a group of generals - "It is on you, gentlemen, that I must lean." I think we must give him his due.'

'There was hope at one time', said the Colonel, 'that he would attempt to retake Belgium. It is after all our natural possession. But no. He is peace-loving, flabby, weak. The army remembers the old glories but cannot add to them.'

All this and more had been said. When they returned to their apartment after their supper with the de la Blaches it was late but Bella was sitting up in bed reading. When Demelza looked at the book she saw it was an illustrated French book called 'La Cigale et la Fourmf.

'Christopher gave it to me,' she said. Demelza exchanged a glance with Ross but kissed her daughter goodnight without comment. They had been rather much together, Christopher and Bella during the last two weeks; too much together; but it all seemed so light-hearted, so jolly that Demelza did not want to become the heavy parent. He was like an older brother. In fact he was younger than Jeremy. Far more sophisticated than Jeremy, and enlarging Bella's experience enormously, yet boyishly scrupulous over just what he said and how he behaved to her. Another, though far less important, influence in Bella's life in Paris was her friendship with Etienne, one of the menservants. He was not a particularly good servant, but he knew a little English and was happy to prattle away to Bella, teaching her French. He was also a passionate Bonapartist and impressed on Bella the idea that Napoleon had never been defeated, only betrayed by his generals. He also taught her a new song.

'What is that you are singing?' Demelza asked one day.

"The "Marseillaise", Mama. Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!'Is it not a lovely tune?'

Ross had no objection to revolutionary songs, but he was less inclined than Demelza to view Christopher Havergal's friendship with his younger daughter in such an easy light. Havergal was an army officer; a hardened campaigner though still so young. Bella was a child, yet no longer a child. She certainly didn't look one. Under Havergal's admiring attentions she had suddenly become much prettier. Little spots on her face, just where the chubbiness of her cheeks joined her mouth, disappeared as if by magic. Her hair seemed to grow more exuberantly. Her eyes, so often alight, glinted from a deeper fire. Of course it couldn't mean anything at her age. Did Havergal even know her age? Talking of ages, Ross looked not infrequently at his wife and wondered if the men who made such a great fuss of her knew how old she really was. It was Bella's situation in reverse. If Bella sometimes looked nearly ten years older, Demelza looked ten years younger. Ross wondered what he had fathered, what he had fostered, what he had wed. In spite of the language barrier Demelza was enjoying herself. A Cornish housewife for most of the last ten years - with the brief interlude at Bowood excepted - she had happily settled into her life as the wife of Captain Poldark and the mistress of Nampara, not so much considering her looks as long as her most beloved husband contrived to be pleased by them. That was life; that was the way it went. She was the wife of one of the most distinguished of Cornishmen whom she loved dearly and who loved her with equal devotion, mother of five children, four living; worrying for them, caring for them, loving them and him, the mother and wife of a happy family. What more could she want? Certainly not to be sharply translated to a strange capital city with no knowledge at all of the outlandish language they all talked. Not understanding a word, coming to grasp a word here and there, making do with the many sentences of halting English her friends and hosts and neighbours spoke, somehow surviving and surmounting the barriers of communication. But out of the blue, as it were, suddenly, as it were, without the least intention or design, as it were, finding herself the centre of so much male admiration as to take her breath away. All right, perhaps all foreigners were like this; perhaps it was a sort of hot-bed society in which attractions and repulsions sharply flourished but she was overcome - and as the Lord was her witness she could not say unpleasantly overcome - by this wave of sexual attention. She had no thought in her mind of being unfaithful to Ross; but one simply could not fail to be inspirited, laughingly diverted, occasionally thrilled and excited by it all. There was a belief abroad that she really knew more French than she pretended, and that her stumbling attempts were a sort of conspiracy on her part to make fun of the language and of them. Her frank replies to subtle compliments were looked on as witty. Her company was sought by women too - much older women who looked on themselves with confidence as still being in the prime of life.

She had to do some shopping - for the Bowood purchases were simply not enough - and Jodie de la Blache went with her, acting as interpreter and consultant. Not only did she take her to the right shops, she insisted the merchandise should be at the right price, denigrating some beautiful material or costume in a way which would have deeply offended Demelza had she been the milliner, until it was bought and paid for and they were on their way home; then she was full of admiration. Jodie was a very feminine woman in a very French way, and Demelza had never met anyone like her. With Ross's tacit acceptance as to expense they bought two new gowns, one for evening, one for afternoon, and two outdoor habits. The afternoon frock was of jade-green gauze over a grey sheath of silk marocain, the evening one a rich plum-purple velvet, much off the shoulders but with a wide necklace of silver tulle. And there had to be sandals - much in vogue - and stockings and fans and reticules. Demelza died at the thought of the expense but died with pleasure at the thought of wearing them. And like many of the men, Ross approved of the result; and unlike the other men, he was able to prove his approval when he got her home at night or most often early in the morning. It was many years since he had been out of love with his wife, but now he fell in love with her over again. He even, wonder of wonders, allowed himself to be persuaded to order a new suit for himself, from Staub in the rue de Richelieu, for his evening clothes were horribly out of date. Knee breeches and stockings had altogether gone except when royalty was present. The young men in particular wore bright coats and embroidered waistcoats but tight ankle-button trousers with low shoes. Jodie tried to persuade Demelza to have her hair cut a la Titus, which meant a short cut curling round the head:

it made the new hats so much easier to wear and was all the rage; but the most Demelza would agree to was a shortening. She was reluctant to lose too much of her hair which for so long had been a part of her, and she was scared to face Ross. But when he was faced, albeit with a compromise, he approved it. Sometimes she would watch Jodie making up her face. Jodie would put rouge on her bare ears, on her temples, under her eyebrows. It was extraordinary. Demelza wouldn't let Jodie touch her own face, but, left alone, she experimented a bit and the result was interesting. Of course there was much that was surprising in this strange city. Everyone spat, women as well as men, in church and in shops, rubbing out the spittle with their heels. The streets had no pavements for pedestrians to use, and you had to be careful lest a window should open and slops be emptied on you. All the ordinary people wore sabots, which made the noisy streets even noisier. The air was much cleaner than London, but the litter even greater. The food was strange, often poor in quality but rich in flavour.

It was embarrassing to be picked out as English and followed by a crowd of urchins, dancing and jeering; nor were some of their elders so much better behaved, making loud and unflattering observations about hats or clothes as they passed. On the other hand, you scarcely ever saw a drunken person in the street, or a badly treated horse, and those pedestrians who didn't choose to be insulting were notably polite. Bella on one occasion was immensely diverted by seeing a man arrested for urinating against a wall.