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It was with a sense of shock and intrusion that Alexa suddenly became aware that her name was being called, and discovered resentfully that it was Charles and that he had somebody else with him. Since there was no help for it, she reined up and waited until he had caught up with her, all the muscles in her face tightening to form a smooth, hard mask. “Alexa! We have been wondering where you had ridden off to all alone. I would not have come to call without sending word ahead, you know, but it is not often my Uncle Newbury pays a visit to these parts, and he has insisted that he must see you.”
Everything she had been hoping to lose seemed to gather around her again as the two men cantered up. What difference does it make if he is here? Alexa tried to tell herself. Charles is his nephew, after all; it’s quite normal that he should decide to pay a visit. And yet, why did she always feel the constriction in the pit of her stomach when she saw this particular man? Her father! But no matter how many times she told herself that, she could not prevent the tension and the watchfulness that almost amounted to fear from spreading through every nerve in her body.
“My Lord, I’m flattered! But I must apologize for the informality of my attire this morning. I didn’t expect...”
“But of course it is I who must apologize for this unexpected intrusion on your privacy.” And then suddenly, as if he had somehow been able to read her thoughts a little earlier, the Marquess said: “I’ve often wondered why we waste time in unnecessary small talk! And since we have complete privacy out here in the open, you do not object if I bring up a certain subject that might prove an unpleasant reminder of certain painful incidents? I do not particularly enjoy doing so, of course; but your fiancé has reminded me that it is perhaps your right to know that within our family, at least, we do not take blatant infractions against the code of ethics that supposedly binds all gentlemen—not as lightly as some may think.”
Alexa looked from one face to the other and could only read in Charles’s face a suppressed kind of look as if he was holding back some strong emotion. The Marquess of Newbury looked no different, although his eyes watched her carefully in the same manner that had always made her so uncomfortable. “I do not think that I...” she began before Charles spoke in an urgent voice.
“Do you remember when you spoke to my uncle on the night of the ball for Helen’s birthday? The same night that...” Before she could prevent it he had leaned forward to seize one of her hands and press it ardently. “I remember how you looked when you confided in me. How resolute and yet how shaken and wounded. And then when I saw for myself the way he dared treat you in front of me... My dearest, there are certain insults that cannot and will not be tolerated.”
The tightness inside her seemed to constrict her breathing and cut off her power of speech, and Alexa suddenly heard the dull thud-thud of her heartbeats in her ears and in her head as if they had been magnified a hundred times. There was something here that she felt she did not want to understand or even to know about. Something crouched and evil and waiting.
“I’m afraid that my nephew has a way of skirting around the point without quite coming to it,” the Marquess said in his usual detached tone of voice, forcing Alexa to turn her eyes and her attention to him against her will. “The powers of darkness...” She had time to wonder why that particular phrase should have suddenly entered her mind when she heard him say in the same almost disinterested voice, “Have you heard anything at all about the Judge and Jury Society, I wonder?”
Chapter 47
As if in preparation for winter, the fog seemed to wrap its long, cold arms about London more and more closely each afternoon and each night while the air itself grew colder and damper. Close to the river the cold and the dampness seemed intensified, and the fog came earlier and stayed longer than it did in other parts of the city.
It only meant more darkness and a renewed awareness of pain, as the chilled air seemed to eat into his sore and lacerated back like acid. It was a reminder, perhaps, that he was still capable of feeling and still, almost impossibly, alive—although he had stopped asking himself why long before. It was easier, he had found, to crawl inside himself and dwell there in privacy and in silence like a Trappist monk, even while his body suffered the agonies of the damned. And whether it was as penance or punishment did not seem important any longer, because his will had been taken from him; and if he had had any choices in the beginning he had none left now, except to endure whatever they decided he must endure, for as long as his body decided to remain alive.
“I wonder if you have learned anything from this, Nicholas?”
For some reason even his power of speech felt rusty from being unused for the past few days while he lay there unmoving and in silence. It was not the eighteenth century, and he had not been thrown in the Bastille on the authority of the King’s lettre de cachet, but he might as well have been. Except for Newbury, he was forgotten, just as if he had never existed at all. Newbury?
“I thought—that you might have gone—abroad for the sun by now.” Turning his head was even more of an effort than speaking, although Nicholas found that he could manage both creditably enough in the end.
“Did you miss me?” Newbury asked somewhat ironically before he repeated his first question, this time with a slight degree of curiosity. “Well, Nicholas? I suppose I cannot force you to answer me, since you have already shown how foolishly and pointlessly stubborn you can be, but I must confess it’s something I’d like to find out. Have you learned anything? Nothing?”
“Since you have been my instructor and mentor in this particular course, why shouldn’t I answer your question? Why then, I suppose I have learned, among other things, obedience, humility and chastity. Oh yes, and patience too. Does it please you? If not, I must beg you to feed me the answers you prefer over honesty, and I will try to give them back to you. Ah, for God’s sake! Why don’t you put an end to this game of yours? Or if you don’t have the stomach for it, instruct the good Brown accordingly. The river’s not too far from here, is it? I think—I think that I should have paid more than in full for my crimes by now, if my honorable judge and jury are pleased to agree.”
“Very eloquently spoken indeed, my dear Nicholas,” the Marquess said affably as he rose from his chair and signaled to Brown. “But you see, even if you—poor, stupid, used fool that you’ve shown yourself to be—even if you have paid for stubbornness and stupidity I am still fair-minded enough to realize that in the end justice should and must win out, and the truth, my poor misguided fellow, must eventually prevail. I almost dislike having to tell you how wasted your noble sacrifice has been, although perhaps you might come to see it as another lesson you have been forced to learn.”
“Oh Christ!” Nicholas said between his teeth when he felt himself hoisted onto his feet again. “And this is yet another lesson, I presume? What else must I learn in order to satisfy your sense of justice?”
“You don’t enjoy being flogged?” Newbury said caustically from behind him. “I should have thought you did, from your cringing willingness to submit to such treatment rather than being strong enough to save yourself merely by uttering the truth, once I had offered you an alternative. You had a choice, you know!”
He had learned, by now, to let the taunts and the challenges flow over him and past him, and how to shut his mind off from what they forced upon him. And so he said only, “It makes no difference whether I want or don’t want, enjoy or don’t enjoy—does it? So, as usual, I submit and am of course your most humble and obedient servant, your Lordship.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Newbury said briefly and gave Brown an order that somewhat surprised the man. “The lantern, Brown. I want it hung from the hook up there, where it’ll shed more light. It’s really far too dim in here to see very clearly. In fact—ah yes—I think another lantern hung up there—excellent! And now we have our stage set well-lighted for the benefit of our audience. You do not mind being kept waiting until they arrive, Nicholas? No, I’m sure that you will not in this instance, since you might well have something more to anticipate than your daily lesson in discipline. Have I made you curious?”
“I suppose I should be curious to find out what offense I am supposed to have committed now to have earned a second disciplining for the day, unless you mean to speed matters along. But I’m afraid I seem to have lost the capacity for being curious, my Lord Newbury, since I’ve learned that there is only what is inevitable, and that must be faced in any case.”
“You have become quite the philosopher of late, haven’t you, my boy? I trust you’ll continue along those lines in the future as well. Such detachment from baser human emotions can only build strength of character in the end. Perhaps I shall be proud of you yet.”
Oh God, I am so tired of all this, Nicholas thought dully. Today had been one of the worst days, with the pain eating into him until it became almost impossible to ignore and became agony so great when they applied that vile smelling “medication” to his cuts that he had become sick from it, unable to stop himself from retching over and over again. And now he would have to face going through it all over again—and have time in which to anticipate what it would be like. Why couldn’t they have hanged him instead? Why couldn’t they take him out and hang him now to provide a spectacle for Newbury and his friends like the public hangings at Tyburn a century ago?
Nicholas hadn’t realized that Newbury had been speaking until the Marquess had raised his voice to say severely, “Really, Nicholas, you might pay a little more attention when you’re spoken to. Quite ungrateful of you, considering the time and efforts I have expended to bring about an end to your—er—incarceration.”
“Then I am sorry, sir,” Nicholas said wearily. “But I was meditating on the wages of sin, you might say.” He added more slowly in a colorless voice, “And I am thankful to you for all your—efforts, of course.” An end, Newbury ha
d said. It had almost ceased to matter how and in what manner it would be ended.
“I should certainly think you ought to be, since I had to go all the way down to the country in order to exert my powers of diplomacy and persuasion. Successfully, I’m happy to report. And as soon as our guests arrive here, why I feel almost certain that the lady whose honor you violated might consider you’ve paid for your misdeeds and are now a repentant sinner deserving to be pardoned. A few groans and moans might help too. You know what softhearted creatures women can be if you excite their pity rather than their vindictiveness. And by all means do not forget to beg her pardon and assure her of your repentance. You do repent, do you not, Nicholas?”
How strange that he had almost forgotten how he had come to be here and why, as he existed from one hour to the next and had his days separated only by his regularly delivered “punishment.” He existed through habit and nothing else and had lost his will to apathy, and he answered Newbury’s question through habit also, as he said in a tiredly indifferent voice, “I am penitent indeed, a Penitente whose sins have been scourged out of him. She might believe it this time and grant me absolution if I ask for it humbly enough, I suppose!”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Newbury said in his silkiest voice. “Why, she might even go so far as to feel some pangs of— conscience, perhaps? Women are such unpredictable creatures, after all!”
