'A vastly elegant assembly, but such a stifling crush,' Anne told her. 'I couldn't get near the supper room and I confess I came home early. You're just too popular,' she told the Duchess.
'You didn't miss much, the desserts were paltry,' said Georgiana with a little grimace. 'I've been trying to retrench my expenses, don't you know, since my last talk with Canis, when he was so kindy about my debts and agreed not to go through with the separation.'
'Splits and divorces are far too common these days,' said Lady Melbourne, smoothing her sheets. 'The art of marriage has been quite lost.'
Not in this house, Anne thought with dark amusement.
Lady Melbourne reached for their glasses. 'Have some more caudle while it's hot.'
Anne could never tell if she liked the drink or not; the spiced wine was good in itself, but the gruel and honey made it oddly cloying.
'Delish,' said Georgiana. 'Was the birth vastly gruelling?'
'No worse nor better than usual,' Lady Melbourne answered with a shrug. 'I know of no less perilous way of bringing the creatures into the world. I always ensure my Will is up to date and leave letters of advice for the children, just in case.'
'I've been starving myself for a fortnight,' said Georgiana, 'but I can't resist your plum cake.' Reaching for the plate again, she offered it to Anne, who shook her head.
'You run too much into extremes, my dear; if you weaken your constitution how will you ever do your duty by the Duke?' asked Lady Melbourne.
'Oh, I know, I know, that's what Bess says,' mumbled Georgiana through a mouthful of cake. 'Since the little girls I've miscarried time and time again—tried electric shocks and milk baths and Dr Graham's frictions—and still Canis's beastly family accuse me of deliberately thwarting their hopes for an heir, when it's all I wish for!'
'Poor darling—but you've only just turned thirty,' said Anne. Her eyes moved to the picture in the top left-hand corner of the bedroom: the whimsical painting of the three of them as witches that Daniel Gardner had painted in the '70s. Herself in black, with a pointed hat and a wand to echo her sharp features, guarding the steaming cauldron—and Georgiana and Lady Melbourne, in creamy satin draperies, descending from the sky with handfuls of herbs for the brew. How unmarked they all looked on the glossy canvas and how merry.
'I spent my birthday in self-examination,' Georgiana assured her. 'I'm sick of my wild and scrambling life—dress, gambling, admiration, gorging—and I'm giving up all my follies. My beloved Bess has promised to watch me like a strict but tender mother. I hardly buy any lottery tickets and I only play for shillings now.'
Lady Melbourne's eyebrows shot up. 'I thought you'd sworn off gaming.'
'Well, only whist, commerce, that kind of thing—no faro or roulette, no games of chance at all,' Georgiana told her weakly.
'I simply can't understand why, with your financial embarrassments—'
'Oh, that's all very easy to say,' interrupted Georgiana, chewing her pretty lip. 'Canis and Racky and my mother and sister play; everyone plays. People expect one to play, and play high; they protest it looks eccentric or priggish if one doesn't and they never believe one isn't rich as Croesus's wife.'
'Gambling's a strange passion,' said Anne.
'A scourge, more like,' pronounced Lady Melbourne.
'It leaves me unmoved,' Anne told her, 'but I know a dozen people who need it like salt.'
'I don't need it, exactly,' protested Georgiana and Lady Melbourne rolled her eyes at Anne. Was the Viscountess one of the many friends who'd lent Georgiana money and would never see it again?
'How's the Duke of Dorset?' asked Lady Melbourne.
'Oh, perfectly well,' said Georgiana blandly.
'Isn't he our ambassador in Paris these days?' asked Anne.
'Well, yes, but he often comes to London; it's an easy journey.'
Was that an indirect admission? Anne wondered.
'I don't know why so many women find Dorset irresistible,' remarked Lady Melbourne.
'Don't chide me, darlingest,' said Georgiana, 'I hardly see the fellow except in company. He does have the most charming, almost melancholy manner.'
Lady Melbourne gave a tight-shouldered shrug. 'Be careful, that's all I say. It was Dorset who ruined Lady Derby for one and a few years ago he did your dear Bess's reputation no good either.'
'Tish tush, there was nothing in that,' Georgiana protested. 'People are so mean about my lovely Racky. Her life's been such a difficult one and every time she so much as smiles at a fellow she's been abused for it.'
Lady Bess Foster's name had been linked with several other gentlemen's as well as the Duke of Devonshire's, Anne knew. It was rumoured that the real reason for her prolonged trip to Italy, two years ago, was the birth of one of Devonshire's by-blows. Some said the Duke and Lady Bess took shocking advantage of the naive Duchess, but to Anne the triangle seemed another of those peculiar arrangements people made for their own happiness. No, what puzzled her was Georgiana's insistence on the innocence of her beloved. Perhaps all she meant was that Lady Bess was good at heart?
'You misunderstand me, my dear Georgiana,' Lady Melbourne was saying with a smile. 'I don't care in the least about Lady Bess's conscience—that's her private business. But the look of things—one's reputation—is in the hands of society. Discretion is the tax we pay the World, or suffer the consequences.'
'I know, I know.' Georgiana sighed. 'But sometimes I feel like declaiming that famous line of Mrs Freelove's from The Jealous Wife. Do you remember?'
'Of course,' said the Viscountess. She quoted grandly,'My rank places me above the scandal of little people, and I shall meet such petty insolence with the greatest ease and tranquillity.' She leaned back against her pillows and suddenly changed tack. 'Now you, my dear Anne, with your ascetic disposition—'
Anne stiffened; what was Lady Melbourne going to say about her reputation?
'It's lucky you've avoided the whole business of breeding, so far at least.'
Anne preferred to think of herself as a woman of sensibility; ascetic seemed a rather unfeeling word. What had her sister called her that night at the Richmond House Theatre? A cool spirit. 'So far?' she echoed. 'I'm thirty-eight.'
The Viscountess shrugged. 'Lady Louisa Parchett dropped her first at forty-three.'
'My statues are my progeny.'
'Did you and Damer have no ... near misses, even?' enquired Georgiana, taking a long swallow of caudle.
'None.' Anne was going to let it go at that, but the other two were looking at her with lazy anticipation. 'The truth is—there was really no question of any of that. After the honeymoon, well, John and I had so little in common,' she said awkwardly.
'Had he mistresses?'
Lady Melbourne's bluntness sometimes embarrassed Anne. 'I think so. The late Mrs Baddeley, the actress—'
'Oh, yes, Sophia Baddeley never could resist a hug and a bracelet.'
'Of course, that's what leads to dying of the pox at thirty-seven,' said Georgiana sympathetically. 'I was just reading her memoirs the other day, in the carriage coming down from Derbyshire; terrible trash, but amusing.'
'I don't know if I ever told you, Anne, but my husband had a lapse in taste and kept Baddeley himself for a while in the '70s.' The baby started to cry and Lady Melbourne reached for a bell-pull on the wall. 'It led to an amusing incident: once, a superb diamond necklace he'd bought her was delivered here by mistake. I put it on for dinner and thanked him kindly for the present.'
Georgiana whooped with laughter.
Anne had to admire her old friend's verve. 'Perhaps, if I'd been as pragmatic as you I'd have made John Damer a better wife.'
Lady Melbourne shrugged. 'One can't conquer one's nature. Could one of you pass the baby?'
Georgiana leapt to scoop up the wailing infant, whose skirt was folded over her feet to make a compact bundle. She gave her to the Viscountess in the high bed, who rocked the child and planted a kiss on the little red curl.
This reminded
Anne, for some reason, of her eagle. At the Academy, I'm showing the osprey I saw your gamekeeper catch at Brocket Hall.'
'Mm,' said Georgiana, 'I hear your pieces are all marvellous, oo cweverfing! I long to see them myself, but I just haven't had a mo.'
'We must pop in as soon as I've got my figure back,' Lady Melbourne told the Duchess.
'How's the original?' asked Anne.
The wet-nurse hurried in just then, curtsied and took the screaming baby.
'Did His Lordship ever manage to tame it, or did he let it fly?'
'What? Oh, no,' said Lady Melbourne, calling up the details, 'the bird got a moult, I'm afraid, and died in a fortnight.'
Anne felt oddly shaken. Right through the cold spring she had lived in such intimate conjunction with the eagle—thought through its muscles, conjured up every feather out of curls of clay. It had seemed the epitome of strength, of furious ambition, despite the chains. And now, to think its bones had been fed to the dogs at Brocket Hall.
MORE THAN a month after the actress had told Derby what she thought of his proposition he was still rigid. No one had spoken to him that way since he'd been a puny new boy at Eton. These days he tried to concentrate on business—committee meetings about the Hodge Podge Bill for any unfinished matters at the end of the Session, his investment in Lancashire canals and a remarkable new flour mill powered by steam, improvements to his tenants' cottages at Knowsley, as well as the redecoration of his Surrey villa, The Oaks. That was what men did, they got on with things. They didn't crumble because one woman, out of all the women in England, had turned her back and said My happiness is none of your concern.
Some nights he lay awake and raw against his great carved headboard in Derby House. Amo ergo sum. Hove therefore I am. He knew he'd trampled on the best thing in his life. But first thing, waking up between sweaty linen sheets, different words spoke themselves in his head: chilly bitch. Who did Eliza Farren think she was? A brewer's granddaughter and a drunkard's daughter, turning down an earl; how his ancestors would laugh in their marble vault.
Tonight Derby was sitting on the bottom row of the Royal Cockpit behind Buckingham Palace—the spot reserved for better-born cockmasters. This sporting establishment had outlived the houses of Tudor and Stuart, and looked set to last at least as long as the house of Hanover. Its octagonal walls were lined with men's bodies; the Babel of wagers and speculation filled the air. Derby leaned forward, elbows on knees, peering into the light the dangling chandelier spread on the twenty-foot circular stage, its yellowing grass. They should have put down some fresh sod; you could see the matting of old bloodstains.
A whack on his shoulder. Sir Charles Bunbury, whisky-breathed, leaned down precariously and shouted in his ear, 'You didn't keep me a place!'
'Beg your pardon,' mouthed Derby.
'Didn't you get my note saying I'd see you at the fight? Now I'm stuck up here between my former wife's third cousin and a shoemaker. Such a ghastly mob—the master should charge more than two shillings in, that's the problem.'
But that was one of the things Derby liked best about sports. All men are equal on the turf and under the turf as the saying went and the same was true of cockpits as of racecourses. In this raffish atmosphere he could sit beside working men in trousers, fellows with chapped, black-nailed hands, and no one cared about anything but the game. He'd lost his purse to a butcher in his time and been bowled out by one of the Duke of Dorset's under-gardeners on another occasion; there was a refreshing equality among sportsmen. It allowed Derby a respite from the dignity and duties of his ancient name.
'How's your own birds these days—had any good mains?' called Bunbury from the row above.
Derby shook his head. His gaze was fixed on the platform of worn sods.
'May I just say, old man, that sometimes you're about as much fun to talk to as my deaf, blind, dumb and flatulent great-aunt?'
Derby's face cracked into a smile.
'I blame those theatricals of Richmond's. You haven't been yourself since.'
'That must be it,' said Derby over his shoulder. 'I've let fame go to my head.'
'Ah, fame,' cried Bunbury. 'That legendary hussy whose favours, like those of a pustulating whore, unfit us for ordinary life.'
Here came the cocks from the pens—Lord Peckinshaw's Red and Mr Foyton's Yellow, held tightly in the hands of their setters—and the spectators leapt to their feet. The law-teller, blank-faced, checked their marks against his identification list.
Bunbury roared down, 'Who's leading the main so far?'
'Peckinshaw,' said Derby. 'His birds have won seven out of ten, at £20 a battle. But the big stake's on this odd match.'
'I should say so. A lovely pair of five-pound champions. The Yellow's a famous warrior; killed three in a row in Newmarket at the autumn meet. I hope you put a hefty sum on him. How big's the bag?'
'£200.'
There were a few last shouted wagers—'forty shillings to one on the Red'—'Done and done!'—and then the law-teller waved everyone back from the grassy platform where he and the two setters stood.
Derby had eyes only for the narrow, close-cropped birds, each of them strapped into a pair of long curved silver spurs. Peckinshaw's scar-thumbed setter moistened the Red's head with his own spit to flatten the feathers. The birds struggled as they were set down a yard apart on the wide chalk ring. The setters backed off, raised their hands to show they weren't interfering. The Yellow was the first to let out a shrill crow of defiance. He manded fiercely, spreading each wing over each outstretched leg in turn, making himself look huge. The Red didn't make a sound, but ran straight at the other and seized him by the neck. The crowd let out a deep grunt.
It was rare for a fight to be a true battle from the start; often all the birds wanted to do was get away from each other. But these two were the right stuff, thought Derby with a quiver of pleasure. They broke apart in a flurry of colour, then closed in again. Every man in the cockpit leaned forward to see what was happening; the audience moved like one body. Foyton's Yellow was a hasty, hearty fighter, but he wasted too much of himself shrieking out his superiority; the silent Red was closer-heeled and deadly with his grip. Another hiss from the crowd; the Yellow had staggered backwards and might have fallen over the raised rim of the stage if the setter hadn't seized him and thrown him back in. Both birds were bleeding now, but not heavily. The Yellow had stopped crowing; neither of them let out a sound. They walked to and fro, toes gripping the worn grass, regarding each other.
The law-teller started the count. It was often like this. Derby could think of a hundred battles in which an initial show of valour settled down into this wounded sullenness, as if courage had leaked out of the birds with the first drops of blood. 'Nine and twenty, thirty, one and thirty.'
Derby found his fingers digging into the polished knob of his cane; he loosened them and rubbed them on his leather breeches.
'Five and thirty, six and thirty.'
At last the Yellow stirred into life; he ran at his adversary as if to peck him in the eye. A chaos of feathers and Lord Peckinshaw's Red struck. Screeching, dragging. He was hung in the Yellow's wing. Peckinshaw's setter jumped in bare-handed and disentangled the red bird's spur from the other's wing feathers with one twist.
Rumpled and outraged, the birds backed off again. 'Five, six,' chanted the law-teller. The setters stood over their cocks but didn't touch them, only hissed incitement. 'Nineteen, twenty, one and twenty.'
'Fight, by gad,' roared Derby, surprising himself.
As if obedient, the birds engaged. The Yellow's wing was ripped and dripping scarlet. He had the Red by the hackle feathers, he was heeling him hard but half the kicks went wide. Derby's eyes stung but he didn't blink; in this game you could miss the decisive moment if you so much as wiped your face. There was a lot of gore now, on grass and feathers, but it was hard to tell which bird had lost the most. A shame, Derby always thought, that blood couldn't be identified by colour as plumage was.
They shook each other loose and withdrew. 'Eight and twenty, nine and twenty.' The law-teller's face was unmoved as he chanted the numbers, his fingers marking them out. After forty counts between fighting, the rule said that the birds were to be set close to, because otherwise they'd never finish it.
'Chop 'em in hand,' shouted a spectator.
Each setter seized his bird in two hands; it was hard to get a tight grip when the blood was fresh and slippery. The silver spikes on the heels were muddy-looking now. The birds were set down beak to beak on the chalk mark at the very centre of the circle. Mr Foyton's Yellow was staggering; the Red broke away, but Lord Peckinshaw's setter had him back on the mark in half a second. The cockpit rang with shrieks now; the birds were silent but the men were crowing out their urgent fury. The Red drew himself up, clawed the Yellow to the floor and with one movement sliced open his throat.
Derby relaxed on to the bench. All around him men were whooping or cursing, arguing or slapping each other on the shoulder. Derby shut his eyes. All things considered, he preferred a battle to the death. Though a fight could be won by default—when one bird turned tail and refused to fight ten times—it always felt unsatisfying. And what was the point of saving the life of a broken-spirited cock, after all, when you'd never risk a penny on him again? No, it was better to let nature take her course.
Foyton's setter had picked up the Yellow by his torn neck to carry him off. Derby found himself thinking of Hector's body, dragged round the walls of Troy. Peckinshaw's man had the Red in his arms, as if embracing him, but of course he was checking his wounds; he put his lips to a deep cut and sucked out the dirt. Now he would pack up the bleeding bird in a warm crate and bring him back to the sheds, for a week of careful nursing, then a month or two of convalescence at His Lordship's estate in Shropshire. It occurred to Derby that the bird couldn't complain; this was better treatment than most army officers got after a battle.