The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (15 page)

“I find nothing wrong with the writings of either man, my lord.”

“Oh-ho!” exclaimed North, warming as if to an oration. “I suppose we shall be informed next that you are also a pupil-in-correspondence with that horned devil, Adams? It must be so, since one mischievous idea only lures its believer toward more and more of them! Tell me, young sir, are you truly one of those who holds that the countryman, let us say, has the same rights as the king? That the power of the former matches that of the latter?”

Phillipe managed to screw up his nerve to reply, “If a king oppresses people, then the countryman should throw the king over. And has the right.”

Lord North became less amused. “Lady Amberly, you have indeed attracted a perfect member of the mob-ility, as we call the rabble over in our rebellious province of Massachusetts Bay.”

He turned to Phillipe once more, hectoring him now.

“Though I do not make a habit of discoursing with commoners in the rain, my young friend, I must advise you of one fact. Englishmen enjoy the fullest liberties of any race under the sun. But liberties are not license. And those who question the natural order of society do so at their peril. As the members of that infamous Boston mob-ility are learning! Wherever you caught this wicked disease of false libertarianism, purge yourself of it before you come to disaster. Now, if you will be so kind as to remove yourself from my path, I will get on with the business of my visit.”

But Phillipe still refused to budge.

Lord North flushed in anger. Finally, though, manners won out. He stepped around Phillipe with such elegant contempt that the servants snickered openly in approval.

Phillipe saw Girard’s face in memory, shouted at the broad back ascending the stairs:

“By what right does one man call himself better than another? Or rule another? Kings rule because the people
let
them!”

North turned and peered down, this time with open hostility.

“Young man, I fear the noxious doctrines of Locke and Rousseau have mortally infected your soul. You’ll come to no good end.”

And with that, the Prime Minister vanished inside.

The door closed on Lady Jane’s hasty apologies and angry denunciations of Phillipe.

Pushing back his tricorn hat with its decoration of white Tory roses, the coach driver exclaimed, “By God, I’ve never witnessed such audacity. Lucky for you, my little sport, that Lord North is a mild-tempered gentleman.”

“And a puppet of your German king!” Phillipe sneered. Even as he guided Marie away from the coach, he was aware of the postilion slipping up behind him. “I’ve heard what they say in the public house. King George hoists the hoop and North jumps through.”

“Speak the name of him who said that and his tongue’ll be out ’fore midnight!” vowed the coachman. He reached high to the seat and snaked down a coiled whip. “Anyone who repeats it deserves something only a mite less harsh.” He uncoiled the whip with a single snap.

Phillipe wasn’t averse to a fight. But he realized that he was outnumbered by the driver and the circling postilion. In a clumsy fray in the mud, Marie might be a chance victim. So he suppressed his anger and urged her down the drive, while the coachman played with his whip and called them obscene names.

Finally, out of range of the jeers, Phillipe slowed up. “Lean on me, Mama. The mud makes for hard walking.”

Her face shone with pride. “Before God, Phillipe, you have a real fire in you!”

“Only when we’re treated as nothing. I really don’t have any desire to start brawls and bring down trouble. But why are we less than they are?”

“That’s always been the order of things, as the man told you. Imagine—the Prime Minister himself! I don’t blame you for anger. But use it wisely. To gain your ends, not endanger your life.”

She seemed almost her old self again, even though she held his arm for support as they made their way along the towpath that had become a quagmire. She added another bit of advice:

“Remember, you must take your place among people of that class, not alienate them.”

Phillipe shrugged. “Evidently I’m already consigned to—what did he call it?—the mob-ility. But who’s the ‘horned devil, Adams?’ I’ll have to ask Mr. Fox. He seems well up on political affairs.”

As they trudged along through the rain, he was swept again by a mood of discouragement. He recalled the blunderbuss firing from the copse, Lady Jane’s warning that she might not be able to hold Roger at bay much longer. He found himself saying:

“Perhaps all this is useless, Mama. My father can’t speak on my behalf—and even leaving Roger out of it, we both know Lady Amberly could hire whole armies of lawyers to argue against the claim. Should we go back to Auvergne?”

Her face turned bleak. “No. Not as long as I own that letter.”

But as they tramped the towpath, muddy and tired, Phillipe began to wonder whether his mother was leading him—or pushing him—toward a destination where he would never be welcome and would never fit.

“M
R. FOX,” SAID PHILLIPE
two mornings later, “I must speak to you about the arrangements for our quarters. My mother and I have nearly come to the end of our money.”

“Then, sir,” answered the graying owner of Wolfe’s Triumph, “I must let your quarters to others. Much as I’d like to extend you charity, I can’t.”

The two stood in the yard of the inn, near the arched gate through which the coach for London had departed only a few moments earlier. The yard smelled ripe from horse droppings.

Mr. Fox negotiated his way around several such fragrant mounds and dropped onto a bench against the inn wall, to rest. Inside, Clarence could be heard saucing one of the serving girls. Overhead, the morning sky was blue and sultry.

“It’s necessary that my mother and I stay on—” Phillipe began.

“That may be. But I ask you in all candor, is it safe?”

Standing in the sunlight, Phillipe still felt a brief chill. “I can’t let that influence the decision, Mr. Fox.”

The innkeeper’s lined face looked startled. “But aren’t you aware that you’re the talk—and in some quarters, the scandal—of the neighborhood? Because of the way you braced the Prime Minister himself? With what I understand are dangerous liberal opinions? You’re fortunate his lordship’s of an even humor, or God knows what obscure law he’d have invoked against you.”

Fox peered at him shrewdly. “You have some hold on the Amberlys, don’t you? It makes the family loathe you, yet tolerate your presence. I know you claimed to be related—”

“I am.”

“I’d like to know how.”

Phillipe glanced up at the closed shutters of the room where Marie was still sleeping. The homely, toothy inn proprietor sensed his uneasiness, laid a kindly hand on his arm.

“Come, lad, I’ve no great affection for the Amberlys myself. I’ll keep your answer private, I promise.”

The reassuring touch of the man’s hand somehow drained Phillipe of his tensions. It was a relief to step from the already hot sun, slump on the bench beside Fox and, for better or worse, share the secret that dominated his life:

“James Amberly is my father, although he never married my mother. The Duke summoned us, before his illness grew so serious that he can’t speak to anyone. Lady Jane hates me because the Duke promised me part of his fortune.”

Mr. Fox let out a long, low whistle. “That explanation never so much as popped into my head. Yet it accounts for everything that’s been puzzling me. Lady Jane condescending to call here—on two foreigners who speak imperfect English. The endless parade of servants dropping in to inquire about you—well, well! Bastardy in the Amberly woodwork. Imagine that!”

When he got over his surprise, the landlord asked, “Have you anything to substantiate this claim of yours?”

“A letter, written by my father. My mother keeps it hidden away. I think Lady Amberly knows the letter’s genuine. She may despise me, but I don’t believe she’s quite ready to take action against me.” He hoped it was the truth. Roger, of course, was another factor entirely.

“I trust that’s right—for your sake.” Fox scraped a grimy nail against one of his protruding teeth. “You’re staying in the hope your father will recover, then?”

“Yes, and receive us, and say the claim will be honored.”

“I can understand that. Still, it doesn’t get ’round the subject on which we began.”

“? could work for you,” Phillipe said. “Not just a little, as I’ve been doing, but all the time. All day long and into the night. Just don’t turn us out now, Mr. Fox!”

The older man pondered a moment. “I’d have to move you to my smallest room—”

“Even the stable if you’ll let us stay!”

Fox was amused at the seriousness of Phillipe’s expression. “No, the small room will do. As I suggested, Lady Jane’s no favorite of mine.”

“Mr. Fox, I can’t thank you enough!”

“No thanks necessary. I’ll get my due in hard work.”

Phillipe frowned. “There’s only one thing—”

“Sir?”

“By staying here, are we in any way exposing you to risk?”

“Lady Jane,” he returned emphatically, “would not dare overstep that far. The laws of England are a right good tangle these days. A poor child’s hand can be lopped off for pinching a cherry tart, for instance. But mostly, the laws are good. They protect Englishmen. During his ministry, Mr. Pitt remarked that even the King himself couldn’t set foot inside the humblest cottage in order to violate the owner’s liberties. And thank God. Such principles are the strength and glory of this country. Also the reason why our cousins over in the colonies are so exercised by His Majesty’s ministers,” he added wryly.

That brought to mind Lord North’s reference to “the mob-ility.” Phillipe asked Fox about it, and the innkeeper proved knowledgeable on the subject:

“The nub of it is, the colonists consider themselves Englishmen just like me. They want the same rights. German George sees it different. He’s determined to have all the power in his hands. The Hanoverians on the throne before him were lazy, profligate men. So when the King was very small, his mother drummed one idea into his head.
‘Be
a king, Georgie!’ As a result, he’s had one prime minister after another. And he’s kept searching for others even more willowy and pliant—the ideal being a man who’d execute the King’s policies without question. In North, he’s found him. And North’s packing the government with his own kind.

“I think George would stamp on the rights of people in these very isles, if he thought he could. But he does appreciate the consequences that might ensue. Englishmen fight when they feel something’s unjust.”

As an example, Mr. Fox cited mobs burning turnpike gates across the land in protest over the high road tolls levied by this or that nobleman who had secured control of a turnpike.

“Some Americans are protesting their grievances in much the same fashion,” Fox went on. “But that, George will not allow.”

“The Prime Minister said I sounded like a pupil of someone called Adams. Who is he?”

“The longest, sharpest thorn in the side of His Majesty. Samuel’s his first name, I believe. Said to be the most adamant and reckless of those who’ve opposed the King’s policies in the Royal Province of Massachusetts.”

Then Mr. Fox went on to sketch some of the events that had produced increasing hostility between George III and his colonial subjects over the past few years.

The trouble had really started at the end of the Seven Years’ War. The financially exhausted government had reached the perfectly logical conclusion that, since British troops had defended and secured the safety of the American colonies during the struggle that had raged from India to Canada, it was only right that the colonies begin paying a proper share of the war debt.

Various taxes had been levied on the Americans by a succession of pliant and accommodating ministers. Mr. Fox referred to a sugar tax, then a tax in the form of royal stamps ordered to appear on various colonial documents. Phillipe recalled Girard’s mentioning the latter.

The taxes raised the question of whether the King’s government in London had the right to impose such levies on the colonies without their consent.

“The crux of their complaint is that they have no voice in Parliament. Therefore they reserve to themselves the right to say what’s taxed internally and what isn’t.”

Colonial protests, Fox explained, ultimately forced revocation of the stamp tax. But then, Chancellor of the Exchequer Townshend—“Champagne Charley,” Fox called him with pious distaste—put through a program of new taxes on all glass, lead, paints, paper and tea imported into America.

“And do you know what happened then, lad? The good Englishmen of the colonies got together and said, ‘Be damned to your merchandise! We don’t need it.’ Trade dropped off like a stone falling into a chasm. There were other, more violent protests—attitudes aren’t all that clear-cut, you see. Many American subjects of the King want only fairness. Agreement to the principle that they alone control internal taxation. A good example of that position is one of their trade representatives who’s in London right now. A learned man called Doctor Franklin. Others, though—especially the Massachusetts crowd—hate the whole idea of a king telling ’em what to do. Adams is reputed to be the worst of the Boston hotheads. He created so much mischief in sixty-eight, royal troops were sent in to garrison the place.

“Surprisingly, though, when the colonies stopped importing, the loudest squeals came from this side of the water. From the merchants of London and the other cities. And they’re influential enough to be listened to—so when North took office last year, he threw out Champagne Charley’s duties. All except the one on tea. That was kept merely to show America the King does have the power to tax, and the colonials had best not forget it.

“Things seemed to be getting back to normal till Adams and his friends stirred the pot again. The Boston mob provoked the troops one winter night. There was a street riot. Five colonials shot down in the snow. Altogether, it’s a troubled land. On one side, good Englishmen totally loyal to the King. In the middle, others still loyal but arguing for fair dealing. And the rest—radicals like Adams—crying that even redress of grievances isn’t enough.