He sniffed surreptitiously at the lustrous collar of
his court suit.
It smelt, faintly, of stale rosewater and tobacco and
sea-coal fumes, with an acrid note of sweat, and a slight overlay of wine.
Under that was the strange, fugitive scent of silk, of tar and the sea and the
spices of the hold of an East Indiaman - although that was possibly in his
imagination, for he had never set foot on a ship bound for anywhere more exotic
than the Low Countries.
He'd been told, in no uncertain terms, that he'd shirked
long enough. That an officer of some seniority, even a supply officer of no
great military significance or birth - General Monck had been very specific on
that last, and Russell could still hear his commander's round rural Devonshire
accent in the memory of it - it was his duty to present himself at
court, and pay his loyal respects to His Majesty, on the glorious event of his
restoration to the throne after eleven years of misery under the Commonwealth.
And then Monck had glowered, and narrowed his little bull's
eyes, pouched in sagging red flesh. "You'll do the pretty, Major Russell,
for all ye were a damnable Roundhead."
The which Major Thankful Russell could not argue, for with a
name like Thankful, he could scarcely deny his staunch Puritan upbringing, and
having almost had himself executed as a political subversive, he had to admire
General Monck's perspicacity.
But. He had thought that after twenty years of keeping his
head down, of being a ferociously good supply officer of no great military
significance or birth, of waking and sleeping lists and requisitions and
logistics - after a life of ruthless and selfless service, he might not,
actually, be forced to show his face at court against his will. Monck said it was a matter of
respect. Russell was a god-damned administrator, a jumped-up pen-pusher, who
the hell did he think he was, in his arrogance, to refuse to present his
respects to His Majesty in person?
They forgot, you see. They saw this neat, slightly austere,
mouse-haired gentleman in his forty-second year, tall and a little stiff in the
shoulders as a result of stooping over his requisition lists these last years. Short-haired, where preposterously curled wigs were the fashion, and so
they called him Old Crophead, for his old Parliament leanings and his present
lack of vanity. Not given to excess, of any nature, but a most prim and sober
and respectable senior officer, the sight of whose scarred face could be relied
upon to damp the high spirits of any gathering.
They forgot that twenty years ago he had been a firebrand,
and a rebel. He looked cold and implacable, but how else might a man look, who
had taken the thrust of the shattered butt of a pike through his cheek in the
early years of the civil wars?
And so it had been a matter of duty, and a direct order,
that Russell should present himself at court. Well, he had. He remembered
little of it. He had, admittedly, fortified himself with perhaps more wine than
he ought to have: anything to stop the shaking of his hands, his absolute bone-deep
horror of being so conspicuously displayed in a public place. More than that,
though, it had just been dull. Nothing happened. Lots of nothing happened. Just
a lot of people talking a lot of nothing in a big room, that smelt of stale
bodies and tallow and too much scent. He didn’t remember being presented to the
King, though he supposed he must have, or Monck would have made him go back.
Smiling politely at everyone, because he didn’t have a clue who was sleeping
with whom, male or female, and it did not do to cut the reigning favourite, or
the court wit. Being called Bosola, which he did not understand, but
which had been kindly explained to him some months later by a friend who had
read such old-fashioned tragedies that it referred to a most notorious court
malcontent and bird of ill omen, in a play.
Being told, by a gaggle of cackling, bewigged striplings,
that if one gilded a turd, it remained, regardless, a turd.
Suggesting to the Earl of Rochester that if he passed such
remarks in Russell's hearing again, Russell would take Rochester's ungodly ape
and insert it where the Lord's grace did not shine.
(Russell had known poets, in his time. The men he knew would
have hesitated to scrawl such doggerel as Rochester wrote, on the wall of a
troop latrine. He was not impressed by a seventeen-year-old libertine. And he
meant it about the monkey.)
He'd stayed close to the wall, mostly, trembling, with the
small of his back against the moulded plaster, taking some comfort from that
cool strength. Holding to his duty, because that was what he did, what he had
done since he was seventeen, and first a young officer. Feeling like an
impostor, in his charcoal-grey lutestring silk, with a jacket that was so short
and tight it barely covered his arse, and great billowing shirt-sleeves hanging
from under the shrunken sleeves. Festooned with ribbon, like a damnable
maypole, with a cravat that trailed in his supper if he was not cautious how he
sat. Ribbons and lace and high-heeled shoes, which made him mince like a girl,
and he could not and would not grow one of those ashy smears of moustache, even
if his scarred face would allow it.
He had been a little drunk, and a lot nervous, and his teeth
had been chattering on the rim of his delicate Venetian glass goblet even before
he'd seen a face he knew, however vaguely: the chubby, deceptively amiable
countenance of Charles Fairmantle, a distant Buckinghamshire neighbour. Member
of Parliament now, he thought. Couldn't remember, and did not care, overly
much. Fairmantle was a toady and a lecher, and a hanger-on to the peripheries
of Rochester's lewd cohort, and the touch of his pudgy hand made a sweat of
sheer repulsion break out on Russell's top lip, as if a warm slug had crawled
over his skin.
They exchanged idle pleasantries, or at the least,
Fairmantle made idle pleasantry and Russell stared blankly at him for the most
part. And then,
"Accept my condolences, Major. A bad business. A bad
business, indeed. You must be devastated."
"Oh. Indeed. Which condolences?"
The pudgy hand on his sleeve, solicitous, leaving a faint,
damp print on the glimmering silk.
"I am so sorry, sir. I had assumed you knew. Your
sister, major. God rest her, she - Four Ashes was burned, not three months ago,
and poor Mistress Coventry with it." Fairmantle shook his head. "I am
sorry. I had not meant - I had not known - sir, you turn positively pale
-"
And Russell, who had hated his sister, and not set eyes on
her in the better part of ten years, had bitten clean through the rim of his
goblet in his shock nonetheless.
He thought that had been the moment when he had decided to
come back to Buckinghamshire for good and all, though it had taken him a few
months of despair and penny-pinching and soul-searching to work out how he
might rebuild the house at Four Ashes.
And then a further few months of despair and soul-searching
when he realised that there was only one woman he'd have entertained as
mistress there, and that she was as utterly, irrevocably not for him as the
moon for the moth.
Possibly he ought to have mentioned that fact to Thomazine
Babbitt, for she was under no such doubts at all, as it turned out. There had
only ever been one man for Thomazine, and the Lord be praised, it turned out it had always been Russell. It seemed
she'd considered him her especial property since she was three years old. It
might have saved him some considerable distress if she'd thought to tell him,
though, he thought wryly.
Well. He smoothed the charcoal silk again, absently.
He'd thought to do her honour on their wedding day, and wear
his finest.
Well, she was marrying a plain gentleman, not a courtier.
He'd given all that up, along with his commission, just under a year ago. He
was no man's but his own.
- And hers, of course. Always hers.
He took a deep breath, and pulled on the plain, decent,
pewter-grey wool waistcoat with the plain silver buttons, and the plain,
old-fashioned, straight-fitting coat that went with it.
"At least the lass will recognise you," he told
himself, smiling wanly at his reflection in the mirror.
Ruffled a hand through his hair - grown to his shoulders,
now, and no longer so indeterminately mouse as it had been when he'd worn it
close-cropped, but streaked fair and dark as a field of wheat when the wind
blows through it. She liked it so, worn long, and straight.
He was scarred, and worn, and weary, and his head hurt when
the wind was in the north.
All that was true.
But Thomazine loved him. And further than that, he did not
care.
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