VIscount Besieged (2 page)

‘
Dora
is quite right, Mama,’ put in Fanny fairly, unusually taking her
cousin’s part. ‘Lord Roborough has shown himself in a very poor
light.’

‘
Thank you, Fanny,’ Isadora said, a trifle surprised. She
added, ‘Let me tell you, Cousin Matty, that if Lord Roborough has
any idea of coming the head of the family over us I shall very soon
make him think better of it.’

Harriet laughed.
‘I should think you will, Dora. But you might consider poor Mrs
Alvescot’s sensibilities. She is looking quite alarmed.’

Isadora stepped
back to her mother’s side, her manner softening at once. ‘Now,
Mama, you know very well that I will never do anything to ruin your
chances. Only I cannot undertake to kowtow to the ordering of my
life by a complete stranger.’

‘
No,
my love,’ agreed her mother, briefly taking Isadora’s hand between
both her own, ‘but perhaps he will not attempt to order your life,
and so we may all be comfortable.’

‘
Judging by the utter lack of interest he has so far shown,’
Isadora said drily, ‘I should think that is all too
likely.’

At this point
they suffered an interruption. Her young cousin Rowland, all of
twelve years old, who had been standing all this time, ready for
his brief part as the headsman, muffled in a black cloth helmet
that concealed everything but his eyes, grew impatient. Tearing off
the helmet, he strode forward, somewhat red-faced from the heat of
the summer sun that came at him through the glass of the central
window.

‘
Here, Dora, are we going to do this Lady Jane of yours or not?
Because if we aren’t—’

‘
Yes,
we are,’ interrupted Isadora in a determined tone, fixing Cousin
Matty with an eye that dared her to intervene.

That lady opened
her mouth to retort, and, encountering a desperate plea in the
eyes of Mrs Alvescot, closed it again with a sigh.

Triumphant,
Isadora whirled about, ushering her cast into position. ‘Come,
Fanny, Harriet. Take your places.’

Behind her she
heard her mother’s whispered plea.

‘
Oh,
Matty, pray don’t enrage her any more. Her temper is particularly
uneven just now, for she misses Aubrey dreadfully, though she will
never let any of us see it. Perhaps it is wrong, but at least it
keeps her amused.’

Grateful for
Mama’s sensitivity, Isadora mentally dismissed the nonsensical idea
that her preoccupation with acting was merely an amusement. It
overrode everything else, for no sooner was she embarked upon her
first line than all became as nothing to the present moment as she
lost herself almost entirely in the poignancy of the
role.

What
difficulties she had experienced in her determination to do this
play had all to do with coaxing from her relatives and friend
performances that would not altogether disgrace her. She had
compromised on the matter of dress, agreeing that mourning garb
would in general provide an appropriately sombre note, so that
only representational headgear denoted Harriet’s queenly role and
Fanny’s princess. Rowland was content enough, having blackmailed
Isadora into allowing him, if he wore the helmet, to use a real axe
for his part as the headsman.

But Isadora
demanded, at the very least, that these indifferent players create
around her a suitably grave ensemble against which her own
portrayal would be the more telling.

She was relieved
to note, in that small percentage of her mind remaining free to
take in what was going forward around her, that this requirement
was being met. She felt the hushed expectancy that fell over the
room as Queen Mary condemned Lady Jane Grey to an early
death—although why Harriet in that role should sound a degree
tearful was a puzzle. She had not time to ponder this, however, for
she must launch into her final emotional speech.

Mama sighed
deeply as she did so and Isadora was satisfied for she had hoped
her haunting rendition might go straight to the heart. She had
planned to cut a truly tragic figure, but she had not bargained for
Queen Mary’s demeanour. Out of the corner of her eye, Isadora
thought she noted the flutter of a pocket handkerchief, and in the
background of her mind she heard a distinct sob.

An admonishing
and fierce whisper was next to be heard.

‘
Harriet!’

Poised for the
climactic moment of her dramatic speech, which would signal the
movement into the final tableau of execution and Fanny’s telling
line to complete the play, Isadora ignored the slight
distraction.

‘
I
have lived only to love,’ she uttered painfully in the character of
Lady Jane, ‘and I have loved only to die.’

Another muffled
sob broke from Queen Mary, producing an instant loud whisper from
the Princess Elizabeth.

‘
Harriet, stop that!’

Somewhere in the
periphery of her vision, Isadora saw Harriet start, and it came to
her belatedly that Fanny had shifted from her position and was now
stationed at Harriet’s elbow. Desperately she tried to ignore the
unscheduled sotto voce dialogue going on in her rear, thankful that
she knew her lines well enough to be able to continue without
effort.

‘
What
is the matter?’

‘
Nothing is the matter with me,’ snapped Fanny. ‘It’s you.
You’re not supposed to be crying.’

‘
Hush,’ warned Harriet. ‘You are troubling Dora.’

But the leading
light of the Alvescot theatricals, thrusting down her
understandable annoyance, refused to allow the disturbance to
interfere with her performance, although she did falter a
trifle.

‘
I
commend…I commend me to my Maker, to He in whose bosom at this
moment rests—’

‘
I
like that,’ came from Fanny in a piercing whisper. ‘It was not I
who was sobbing loud enough to be heard all over the
house.’

‘—
my
soul, my heart, my love, my husband,’ Isadora persisted, raising
her voice over the top of the background hubbub.

‘
For
goodness’ sake, Fanny,’ exclaimed Harriet impatiently. ‘Will you be
quiet?’

At this point,
completely losing the thread of Lady Jane Grey’s discourse, Isadora
paused uncertainly, casting about in her mind for the line she had
lost, whereupon the twelve-year-old headsman, glancing wildly round
in the sudden silence, became convinced that he had missed his cue.
Uttering his only line, a hoarse grunt that he had rehearsed until
his throat ached, he hefted his axe on high.

‘
Rowland, no!’ shrieked his sister Fanny.

Harriet
screamed. Isadora jumped violently. Rowland started and lost his
grip. And two petrified pairs of audience eyes watched the heavy
axe fall from the nerveless hands of the confused headsman and land
with a thud on the carpet.

Instant
pandemonium broke out; cries of dismay and alarm, a concerted
movement away from the axe—for the handle bounced and shuddered as
it hit the floor— and a sound like a rushing wind as Cousin Matty
leapt from her chair and dashed across the room.

‘
Rowland, you stupid boy!’ she shrieked, and boxed her son’s
ears.

Mrs Alvescot,
apparently under the impression that this was all part of the play,
broke into enthusiastic clapping.

Isadora,
standing blinking and confused in the ruined chaos of her tragedy,
was turning from one to the other of her fellow players as if
seeking guidance. Oddly, it was the expression of applause from her
mother that brought her out of her stupefaction. Applause? They had
not even finished the play! She whirled to face her young
cousin.

‘
Great heavens, Rowland, what in the world were you thinking
of? I had not finished my speech.’

‘
Yes,
and I have not had a chance to say my line,’ accused Fanny, glaring
at her erring brother, who was massaging his tender ears. ‘Princess
Elizabeth does have the last word.’

‘
Well, if you wish to complain of that, Fanny,’ put in Harriet
severely, ‘you have only yourself to blame. You would keep
talking.’

‘
I?’
gasped Fanny, outraged. ‘You began it, Harriet—’

‘
I
could hear both of you chattering behind me, if you want to know,’
Isadora interrupted, irate. ‘And never mind your line, Fanny. What
about my play? It is utterly ruined!’

‘
I
told you not to let him loose with an axe, Dora,’ said the boy’s
mother, lifting the offending article and placing it carefully
against the wall out of harm’s way.

‘
Let
him loose? He had only to lift the thing at the right moment. A
child could have done it.’

‘
He
is a child, Dora,’ Harriet pointed out, removing the simple
cardboard crown from about her brow.

‘
I’m
not a child,’ protested Rowland hotly, the words belied by his
chubby countenance. ‘Only Fanny startled me by shouting. I thought
I’d missed my turn.’

‘
It
wasn’t me shouting. It was Harriet. Anyway, she started it. She was
crying
.
’

‘
So
it was you sniffling,’ Isadora broke in despairingly, diverted from
the main issue. ‘How could you? After everything I said in
rehearsal.’

‘
But
you do it so well, Dora,’ her friend pleaded excusingly. ‘How could
I help it? Even the thought of sending you to the scaffold upsets
me.’

Isadora cast up
her eyes. As if they had not been over this a thousand times.
‘Harriet, Mary could not possibly have cared about Lady Jane. This
is Bloody Mary we are talking about. She went on to slaughter I
don’t know how many Protestants.’

‘
Yes,
I know,’ agreed Harriet. ‘You told me so. And I said I did not like
it. I wish very much that you had not made me play her.’

‘
Indeed, so do I,’ said Isadora frankly. ‘I should have given
it to Fanny, except that she is not old enough.’

‘
I’m
fourteen,’ protested Fanny. ‘And I certainly would not have
cried.’

‘
Cried?’ echoed Isadora, raising her brows. ‘No, indeed. You
would rather have relished condemning me to have my head chopped
off.’

Both Fanny and
Rowland burst into laughter at this, but Harriet was
shocked.

‘
For
shame, Dora, how can you talk so?’

‘
Yes,
you should not jest about such things, Dora,’ agreed Cousin
Matty.

‘
I’m
not jesting.’

Cousin Matty
clicked her tongue and came up to lay a protective arm about her
daughter’s thin shoulders.

‘
Anyone would suppose that Fanny is not at all fond of
you.’

‘
She
isn’t,’ claimed Isadora flatly, and her dark eyes went to her
cousin’s. ‘Are you?’

Fanny grinned.
‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly send you to the scaffold.’

‘
Dora, my love,’ came plaintively from the armchair across the
room. ‘Do you tell me something has gone wrong? Oh dear, and I
thought it went off so well.’

‘
Yes,
Mama dearest, something has indeed gone wrong,’ Isadora agreed,
sailing across the room. ‘What should happen is that when I finish
my speech I walk around in a circle and the others follow me. I
kneel, Rowland raises the axe, and Fanny says—’

‘
But,
my love,’ interrupted her mother in a horrified tone, ‘you were
surely not going to have poor Rowland drop the axe on
you?’

‘
Fanny would have done,’ put in Rowland, grinning as he
followed Isadora across the room.

He hovered by
the door a moment or two and then sidled from the room. Isadora
noticed but kept mum, realising that Rowland probably depended upon
his lapse from grace being better repaired in his
absence.

‘
The
thing is, Mrs Alvescot,’ Harriet explained, coming across the room
towards her, ‘that Rowland should not have dropped the axe at all.
I’m afraid both Fanny and I are to blame for that.’ She glanced at
Fanny, who was muttering in protest. ‘Yes, we are, Fanny. I have
the grace to acknowledge it, even if you do not.’ Turning to
Isadora, she took her hands, saying penitently, ‘I am so sorry,
Dora. Between us we have spoilt it for you.’

Isadora squeezed
the hands she held. ‘No matter.’ She grinned impishly. ‘It only
goes to prove that Cousin Matty was right, and fate has decreed
that the performance was not to be. I dare say it is for the best.
It is only a trifle of a play, after all.’

‘
Oh
no, Dora, don’t say that. It is a very good little play.’ She
turned back to Mrs Alvescot. ‘I do wish you might have seen the
end. The raised axe was all to be part of the final tableau, you
understand. Dora had conceived it quite brilliantly, I
think.’

Fanny had by now
joined the party, and, the excitement having begun to die down,
she and her mother, together with Harriet, disposed themselves in
sofas and armchairs, choosing from out of the unmatched collection
seemingly set higgledy-piggledy about the room in homely comfort
those seats conveniently close to Mrs Alvescot’s chair.

As Isadora knew
and valued, a sense of fashion and order was entirely lacking in
this large family drawing-room in the house at Pusay. Portraits and
paintings had been hung around the walls with no logical or
aesthetic plan. A baize-covered table at one end served equally for
card games, letter-writing or the tea-tray—indeed, any occupation
that happened to suit at a given moment. A pianoforte and a harp
stood against one wall, the one sometimes utilised by Mrs Alvescot
and the latter suffered over by Fanny.