Cynthia Bailey Pratt (27 page)

“What!” For the first time Mr. Fain forgot to modulate his voice. As though clockwork, every face in their pan of the gallery turned toward him. He scowled around, and they once more turned their backs. “What do you mean, you fell out a window?”

“Not fell. Flung. Ourselves. We had no choice. It was that or be burned in the vicarage. I’m afraid they couldn’t save your house.”

“Cocker bungled it. I might have known I couldn’t trust that— What were you and Helena doing in the house? I thought she spent the night with you.”

“Cocker told us that you’d changed your mind, that she must come home. We went back, and while we were there, he burned the building.”

“Cocker! I shall settle with him.”

“That is what . . .” She hesitated, nearly but not quite mentioning Hammond. Somehow she felt she should not. “I thought you would say that. Why not now?”

“Don’t be stoopid.”

In the room below an increase in the bustling of the servants undoubtedly meant the advent of the royal presences. The people within the Camera fell silent as the building rang with the cheers of those standing in the street.

“They’re coming,” Mr. Fain said, breathing fast.

He stepped back from her, and Jocelyn, for the first time, looked at him without fear distorting his image. His costume was in the worst possible taste, every color clashing with another. She realized his bonnet was one she and Helena had trimmed the week before last.

With another look over his shoulder, like a woman checking for spies against her modesty, Mr. Fain lifted his skirt. Jocelyn saw he wore rough countryman’s trousers beneath the worn red velvet of his gown. He sheathed his short knife.

With difficulty he reached into the pocket of his trousers and brought out a long-nosed pistol. It snagged on the material. He yanked it free. Jocelyn gasped and searched the crowd for help. They were all pressing forward, eager to see over the balustrade to catch the first glimpse of royalty. However, they were careful to leave a wide margin around the coarse woman and her young companion.

Mr. Fain held the pistol in front of his body. The pillar protected him from the crowd on one side, Jocelyn screening his hands from eyes across the rotunda. The two old men were close to him, arguing over some minor point of protocol. Jocelyn heard every word of their discussion as if she were in a dream.

“Your shoulder against the column,” Mr. Fain ordered, pushing her into the cold pillar. “Put your hands in the pockets of your coat. Stand still.”

Something hard passed between her left arm and the marble. Looking down, Jocelyn saw the black end of the pistol emerge. She tried to move but Mr. Fain’s hand pressed against the small of her back, restraining her.

“You know, of course,” he said conversationally, “that Judith saved her people by killing the Assyrian General Holofemes. You undoubtedly do not know, for the English are stupid about the rest of the world, that Charlotte Corday D’Armont killed Jean Marat. I did not agree with the lady’s politics, but there can be no doubt she knew how to kill.”

“Why do you tell me all this?” Jocelyn asked, although she felt she knew.

“Why, they are famous women assassins, and so shall you be. Or seem to be. I shall watch your future career with interest.”

Below her Jocelyn could see large men in flowing trousers and tight pinkish coats entering and ranging themselves along the walls. They all carried long, heavy whips.

Mr. Fain said, “Those are Cossacks, the Czar’s personal guards.”

Jocelyn nervously toyed with something in her pocket. She felt it curiously, trying to recall what it was. Jocelyn said, “Don’t you want to die for your cause, Mr. Fain? It can’t be that you are afraid.”

He chuckled. “An obvious ploy, Jocelyn. Every man is afraid to die, or he is a fool. I was willing to commit this great act and die a hero. I should much rather live as one. The moment I saw you today, I knew what a help you would be.” His voice dropped, became soothing. “Stand still only a moment longer. I will soon be gone.”

Now men who, by their dress, were gentlemen of rank and quality entered the vast round chamber. They sought out their places at the tables. A babble of voices rose and mixed with the exclamations from the gallery as various celebrities entered.

“General Blucher, there in the blue coat—good old Blucher!’’

A cheer went up as the hero of the Prussian army was recognized. The white-haired general, already seated, stood up again, a glass in his hand, and waved it over his head, then sat down heavily, nearly missing his chair altogether.

“Drunk already, by God!” said one of the elderly gentlemen near to Jocelyn.

“Just a few more moments,” Fain murmured, soft as a lover.

Her head spun. There was no help at hand. Fain was going to kill, and she could do nothing.

“Excuse me, madam,” someone said on their right.

The assassin jumped, and Jocelyn nearly lost her footing. The old straight-backed man stood beside them, saying, “Your bonnet, madam, renders it impossible for my friend Mr. Crowley to see. Kindly doff it at once.”

In answer Mr. Fain said something filthy and looked away. But the old man, with the tenacity of one who cannot hear a denial, insisted. Mr. Fain shook his head. Again, the loud flat voice demanded the bonnet be removed. His left arm still behind Jocelyn, the pistol pointing outward. Fain turned toward the old man to glare him into silence.

Jocelyn paid no attention. She frowningly concentrated on the crunchy thing in her pocket. Almost laughing, she remembered it was Arnold’s paper of candy. How trivial!

The sun through the upper windows shone brilliantly in her face. Jocelyn turned her head away from the scene below and began to pray silently. When she opened her eyes, she saw the bent man, McMasters, standing behind Fain, nodding his head to the arguments of his friend. He did not lean upon his cane but held it at an angle, more or less at Fain’s ankles. Jocelyn remembered Mr. Quigg and his pitchfork handle.

She took the bag from her pocket, moving her hand a scant inch at a time. She tried to picture the candies, whether they were round and smooth or angular. It didn’t matter. Half-turning, she spilled the pieces down her coat, hoping they’d fall silently. Mr. Crowley was booming noisily, protesting Mr. Fain’s reluctance to remove his hat. Jocelyn heard the thumping of a band, and the cheers from the outside swelled.

Mr. Fain relaxed his hold on Jocelyn. She took one step forward so the balustrade pressed against her middle. He felt her move and grabbed at her while still looking at the old man. Jocelyn hooked her foot behind his leg. Sliding on the candy, Mr. Fain fell down. Tripped by his skirt and hers, Jocelyn landed on him, her elbow striking his stomach. She felt the pistol against her side. Then someone else was there, forcing Fain’s hand away. The cheers for the princes made the inside of the rotunda ring like the bells chiming all over Oxford.

The tall old man stooped and helped her to stand. “Terrible crush here, they shouldn’t have allowed so many people up.”

“Stop him,” Jocelyn gasped. “He has a gun.”

He smiled and said to his companion, “If you wouldn’t mind, take his pistol.”

Though the Prince Regent of England and the Czar of Russia were at this moment taking their seats, Jocelyn had eyes only for the bent old gentleman. He grinned up at her, kneeling beside Mr. Fain’s prone body. His face was less wrinkled than she had thought and what looked like flour daubed his hair and coat. One dark eye winked. Jocelyn grinned back, all her troubles at an end.

Hammond said, “I can’t search his clothes. Someone would take the wrong idea. Will you help me?”

“Miss Burnwell has helped you enough, I think.”

Jocelyn looked at the other old man. He wore no disguise. His hands trembled, but he bore himself with an air of strength. He shuffled his feet and tottered on the citron drops. Jocelyn caught his arm to steady him.

“Thank you,” he said with a slight bow. “I am Lord Ashspring. At least, I am now Lord Ashspring. For most of my life, however, I was Feldon Burnwell, a stiff-necked and obstreperous old man, as Captain Hammond made so bold to tell me today.”

“Feldon Burnwell?” Jocelyn said in wonder. “My grandfather?”

Mr. Fain groaned and sat up. His bloodshot eyes shifted under the bonnet, right to Hammond, then found Jocelyn. “Is he dead?” he said to her.

“No, you’ve failed,” Lord Ashspring answered abruptly. “And you’ll hang.”

Chapter Seventeen

The former vicar said nothing more, once he realized his attempt had failed. Hammond hustled him away. No one paid any attention. The crowd in the gallery swallowed them up at once. Jocelyn could feel a certain pity for Mr. Fain, now.

“Lieutenant Fletcher is waiting for them,” Lord Ash-spring said quietly. “He’ll spend the night in the Oxford gaol and in the morning be taken up to London for trial.”

“Poor Helena. She will suffer the most for this.”

“Yes.” The man she now knew as her grandfather patted her shoulder rather awkwardly. “Look, His Highness is excusing himself.”

Far below, a short figure in a formal, military-style coat, gold flashing from a sash around his considerable middle, bowed to his black-haired cadaverous guest, all in blue and silver. Quite merrily, so far as Jocelyn could tell, the prince regent took the arm of a person next to him and sauntered away.

“They’ll have just told him about all this. Come, he’ll be asking for me.”

“But I can’t ...” Jocelyn protested, fluttering her fingers over her attire and bedraggled hair.

“Never mind,” Lord Ashspring said. “Actually, I’d rather you looked the dowd when you meet him, than otherwise.”

The main interior stair of the Radcliffe Camera circled grandly downward amid plaster reliefs. Hammond waited at the bottom of the steps, his hand on the ornate iron rail. “Fain’s been taken away, my lord,” he said, straightening.

“Very good. You might as well come along to meet His Highness. Or do you know him?”

“No, my lord. I’ve never had the honor. My father and he . . . but of course you know.”

“Yes, and I’ve no doubt he’ll remember as well. What a quarrel that was. Epic.”

“My father has the devil’s own temper. I believe he regretted it, later.”

“He’s regretted every argument he’s ever had,” Lord Ashspring said meaningfully. “But always too late. The prince and he are alike in that way, too.”

They waited in an anteroom full of empty bookshelves. Her grandfather disappeared in a few moments, talking rapidly with an exquisitely dressed middle-aged man, who seemed on the verge of tears.

As soon as she and Hammond were alone, Jocelyn said, rather shyly, “I haven’t thanked you yet for coming to rescue me. I didn’t think you’d noticed anything wrong when I went past you.”

Hammond looked up into a big gilded mirror hanging on the wall between two marble gods. His fingers adjusted his cravat, but his eyes went to her. “I didn’t, truth to tell. Except you called me ‘Captain.’ I thought that was only because you were with someone from Libermore. Tom didn’t know the ‘woman’ you were with, but he confessed he didn’t know most of your friends. It wasn’t until Arnold came running up—”

“Arnold!”

“Yes.” He turned around, no smile lighting his face. “We owe him everything. He followed you, hoping, I think, to wheedle you into taking him up. He saw Fain throw you to the ground in the Old Quad.”

“Oh, yes.” She recoiled from that memory, the palms of her hands beginning to sting. She supposed they’d hurt all along; she’d just been too busy to think of them.

Hammond came to her. Looking inward, Jocelyn said, “I walked right past Mr. Fain, you know. I even nodded to him. He looked familiar and yet ... really, the only thing I recognized was the bonnet he wore. Helena and I trimmed it, last month.”

“Don’t think about it anymore. It’s over.” His fingers brushed her cheek. “I’m very grateful to Arnold.”

“So am I. I shall have to buy him more candy. That’s what Mr. Fain tripped on.”

“Was that it? I’ll buy out the first sweetshop I come to,” Hammond promised.

He bent his head to kiss her, and she longed for him to. If he would only hold her, the horror of remembered danger could be kept at bay. The strength of his arms was the only weapon she required. All her love shone in her eyes as she raised them to his face. His expression sobered.

Before he could embrace her, the door behind them opened. A cough exploded. A short man, also beautifully dressed, said, “Please come with me, sir, Miss Burnwell.”

As they followed him down the hall, Jocelyn noticed that his steps were oddly mincing. After a moment she realized his formal slippers had high heels.

Jocelyn caught Hammond’s arm as they walked. “Did your father actually know the Prince Regent?”

“Is that all you can think of, at a time like this? Yes. But he was only the Prince of Wales then.”

His Royal Highness’s querulous tones penetrated the thick oaken door. Hammond and Jocelyn entered while their escort, actually the Pursuivant Herald Red, approached His Highness.

George, Prince of Wales and Regent of England, paid no attention. He breathed heavily, looking at his equerry with confusion in the depths of his flab-surrounded eyes. “Are you certain there are no more of these villains lurking about? Is attempt after attempt to be made on our life with no one raising so much as a finger to prevent . . . ?” He shuddered strongly.

The Herald murmured something to His Highness. “Yes, yes.” He turned toward them, his head lifting nobly as he said to Hammond, “Our thanks to you, sir. A noble deed, done well.”

Jocelyn, distracted from the prince’s dyed hair and doughy skin, understood at once why, for all his faults, the Prince Regent commanded the ready affection of his friends, difficult though it might be for him to retain it. Those bright blue eyes turned next to her, and she dipped profoundly. He addressed no words to her, only inclining his head in response to her curtsy.

She felt Hammond take her arm, and they backed from the room. His breath went out of his body in a great sigh. “Not too bad, for a man who last year never thought to come to England again.”