Bride of the Wilderness Read online

  “Good. It would be a pity if she was wasted on the wrong man.”

  Montagu took some snuff and sneezed three times in rapid succession. When he looked at Henry again there were tears of pleasure in his eyes.

  “She needs a man who knows how to wake a virgin up,” he said. “We’ll meet again.”

  8

  On the morning after Oliver’s wedding, he and Henry met at ten o’clock, as they did every day, to drink their morning draft together at the Rose Tavern in Drury Lane. Many of the wedding guests were there already, and as he limped across the floor to join his friend, Oliver was pelted with jokes.

  “For some reason I have a thirst this morning,” he said, and ordered a second pint. He drank it down, watching Henry over the rim of the tankard.

  “Rose was in Fanny’s bed when she woke up this morning, talking in her sleep,” Henry said.

  Oliver put a corner of ale-soaked toast into his mouth and talked while he chewed. “Poor Rose,” he said. “She’s not used to it. I’ll buy her some presents today and she’ll be all right.”

  “Not used to what? I thought she was a widow.” “She’s more like a virgin. Very shy, Henry, and needing to be taught.”

  Oliver spoke these words in a hoarse whisper, a look of great pleasure and affection lighting up his face. His skin was pasty as a result of all the alcohol he had drunk the night before, and his hands trembled slightly as he dipped his toast into his mug of ale.

  Henry gave him his second piece of toast and smiled. “It’s still love on the morning after, then?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Oliver asked. “I’ve been waiting for this girl all my life.” He looked right and left, leaned toward Henry, and whispered again. “I tell you, Henry, you can’t imagine what she’s like. Nobody could.”

  “Perhaps that’s just as well,” Henry said.

  He paid the bill. Outside, beside the muddy street, the friends waited in the doorway of the tavern for sedan chairs to carry them over the mud to the Thames, a few hundred yards away.

  “Rose’s rain has ruined the streets,” Henry said, “besides costing me a hundred guineas.”

  “Montagu was right,” Oliver said. “Only a fool would bet against the rain in April”

  They hailed a couple of chairs, the chairmen grunting as they lifted Oliver to their shoulders and moved off down the Strand.

  The storm had roiled the river, and the water was even browner than usual. The weak springtime sun had not yet burned away the fog, but the air was fresh, and the dingy gulls, flashing in the sunlight and then vanishing into the mist, sounded unusually loud. Seeing Henry and Oliver approaching the embankment, the crowd of boatmen waiting for passengers at the end of Strand Bridge Lane began shouting the customary “Oars! Oars! Anyone for oars?”

  Oliver, who always made such arrangements for the two of them, selected a man he knew and gestured Henry into the bow.

  “London Bridge,” Oliver said.

  “Would the gentlemen want to row on to the Tower first, to see the faces looking out the windows?” the boatman asked.

  “No.”

  “I don’t blame you, sir,” the boatman said, grunting as he pulled on his oars. “Really I don’t. There hasn’t been a new face looking out the windows of the Tower that you’d know or care to see since the Duke of Monmouth was inside, and that was fifteen years ago. You remember the noble duke, sir. The ax was dull and he had to tell the headsman to sharpen it after the first stroke barely nicked his neck. The duke’s words were sharper than the ax, is what I always say. The second chop didn’t kill him either, and the headsman had to finish him off with a knife. Horrible it was, sir. Now that would have been worth seeing.”

  Oliver said, “Row, will you? We don’t want any damned river wit.”

  The boatman raised his voice so that it carried over the water to the dozens of other boats around them. “Want to be alone with your thoughts on the day after your wedding, sir? Of course you do. You may wonder, sir, how I know about your happiness. You do wonder, I see that, so I’ll tell you and put an end to your curiosity. I saw you yesterday, going down the river to the church and then coming back again. That’s a lovely bride you’ve got, sir. Boats were turning over right and left in admiration as that lovely lady floated by, but of course you were too happy to notice the drowning men. Every man died happy himself, sir, having drunk in your bride’s beauty before he drank the Thames.”

  The boatman pulled harder on the oars and overtook a boat loaded with fashionably dressed people who were laughing at his jokes.

  “Bridegroom aboard!” the riverman cried. “Married just yesterday and this morning he already needs ’ores! ’Ores, ’ores, he needs ’ores!”

  Oliver paid no attention to this rude joke. But when they debarked, Henry gave the man an extra sixpence for it.

  At the end of London Bridge, a chairman looked Oliver up and down and said, “Sorry, sir, I can’t risk it in this mud when the hill’s so steep.”

  “You’ve done it before,” Oliver said. “Why should I have mud on my boots because God made me big? Use four men. Use six if you want to.”

  “Even so, it won’t do, sir. Two men have fallen under heavy loads in this mud and broke their legs. If I have no legs I have no food.”

  “Blast! Nobody wants to work in England anymore.” “Come,” Henry said. “I’ll walk with you.”

  “No. Up, up!”

  Oliver strode through the knee-deep mud in Fish Street Hill. It was clear that it was painful going for him, and Henry, smiling at his back, wondered how he had injured himself. As a young man Oliver had often fallen out of bed at the Widow’s, taking the girl with him; the other clients, hearing the crash above their heads, would cry “Barebones!” and give him a cheer.

  The chairmen, stepping into Oliver’s footprints, followed with Henry’s sedan chair on their shoulders. They threaded their way through a traffic jam of mired carriages and floundering horses. Oliver lost one of his boots in the muck and stood on one leg, leaning on Henry’s chair while he put it back on.

  The two men were on familiar ground in this neighborhood, and as they turned into Lombard Street they began to see their friends. The street was full of ships’ owners and ships’ masters on their way to Lloyd’s Coffeehouse.

  As he did every day, Praise God Adkins awaited his partners at the table that was their center of business. An auction by the candle was in progress as usual.

  “What are they selling?” Henry asked.

  “A cargo of coffee waiting in a French ship at Honfleur,” Praise God whispered. “Will the Pamela stop there on this voyage?”

  “Joshua said so. We have an order for ten barrels of Normandy applejack.”

  “But he’s overdue. He may sail on to London.” “He’s often overdue. He always fills his orders.” “The Pamela is overdue?” Oliver asked. This was the first he knew of it, and a look of anxiety came into his face. “Does that mean there’ll be no money?”

  “That’s what it always means,” Henry said. “Why, are you short?”

  Oliver laughed and his eyes wavered, a mannerism new to Henry.

  “I’m a married man now,” he said. “Worrying about money is part of the husband’s job.”

  Henry examined his friend’s expression for a moment. He looked as if he really was worried. This, too, was new.

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Oliver said, and limped away into the crowd of men—Englishmen and foreigners of all kinds—who hung about at Lloyd’s for shipping news and gossip.

  Because the Pamela sailed under two flags and this was a risky practice, Henry kept her destinations and her cargoes in his head, telling his partners only what they needed to know.

  Henry joined the auction and won the cargo of coffee at the excellent price of sixty-five pounds, ten shillings—the ten shillings being his final bid. He went back to the table. Oliver was already sitting there with another mug of ale before him.

  “No useful news of the Pame
la,” he said. “There’s a dago master over there who saw her loading chocolate in Tangier eight weeks ago, but no one has seen her since, in port or at sea. The dago said there was a storm in the Bay of Biscay three weeks ago that nearly sank his own ship.”

  “Which dago?” Henry asked.

  “There,” Oliver said. “The one talking to Montagu.” Montagu stood in the middle of the room in his gaudy clothes, talking to a burly Portuguese dressed in black.

  “The parrot and the crow,” Henry said. “What’s Montagu doing here? I don’t like that man, P.G.”

  “You’re right not to like him, Henry. He’s the rottenest man in London.”

  Henry looked at Praise God in surprise. The old man hardly ever spoke a bad word of anyone. London, and especially Lloyd’s, was full of men who made you want to count your fingers after you shook hands, but Praise God ordinarily made no moral judgments. He was only interested in business. Did they keep their word? Did they pay their debts? Nothing else interested him.

  “Rotten how?” Henry asked.

  “Cheats people,” Praise God said. “Goes round behind their backs and takes what’s theirs. Uses toughs and bullies to get what he wants. Doesn’t give a damn about the law. He’ll steal your eyes and diddle your wife while you’re screaming from the pain, that’s what they say about Montagu.”

  Montagu was through with the Portuguese. He walked across the room to Henry’s table.

  “Ah, Harding,” Montagu said. “You again. I admired your bidding by the candle just now. Never saw a man who could do as many tricks as you.”

  “Really? I thought everyone was tricky in the Cocoa Tree.”

  Montagu did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “I’ve been asking for news about your ship—the Pamela, is it? They say she’s overdue.”

  “Ships are often late—winds, tides, slow work in foreign ports.”

  “And pirates and shipwreck, I suppose,” Montagu said. “They say your captain is a dago. I shouldn’t be happy if I had a dago for a captain and my ship was late.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well you’re in some other business than shipowning, then. I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “I’ve never had a reason to be here.”

  Montagu turned to Oliver. “Sorry it rained on your bride,” he said. “She’s certainly a beauty. Not in the same class with that musical daughter of Harding’s, of course. Fanny, is it? My favorite name. Amazing skin—and that dago hair! I congratulate you, Harding, you’ve trained her up to be a paragon as well as a beauty. She’ll make some lucky man a fabulous wife.”

  Montagu turned to Henry and smiled flirtatiously, almost as if he were smiling at a woman.

  “On that subject, my offer stands,” he said. “Assuming, naturally, that the dowry is adequate. That seems rather chancy. What if your ship has sunk?”

  Montagu turned and left.

  “What offer?” Oliver said. “What dowry?”

  “He says he wants to marry Fanny.”

  “Marry Fanny!”

  Oliver rose to his feet, blood running into his face, fists doubled, and knocked over a chair.

  “Sit down,” Henry said. “He’s not the man for her.” “Not the man for her?” Oliver said. “I’ll stick the bastard into the muck by his head.”

  Henry turned to Praise God. “Tell me more about Montagu,” he said.

  “How can you not know? Everybody else avoids him like the plague. Montagu builds houses, whole streets of them, and sells them to people who want to make a show. He’s famous for taking what he wants—money, property, women. I heard of a man who wouldn’t sell Montagu a house he wanted, so Montagu came in the night and pulled it down around his head. Half of London is suing him.”

  “Oh,” Henry said. “That Montagu. I thought this one was a connection of Mountagu, the Earl of Sandwich.”

  “He wants you to think that. Montagu is not even his name. He just calls himself that.”

  Oliver had been drinking ale rapidly to cool himself off. As he drank, he listened, and a look of curiosity had come into his eyes. He leaned toward Praise God and asked a question. “Is he rich?”

  “Sometimes, when he isn’t bankrupt. How do you two know him?”

  “We saw him in the Cocoa Tree a few weeks ago and made a bet with him.”

  “You won?”

  “There were two bets, actually. I won the first and lost the second. He called on me to collect the money. Maybe Montagu’s in one of his bankrupt periods.”

  “That’s when he’s dangerous,” Adkins said. “But as it happens, he’s far from bankrupt just now. He’s been lending money all over London.”

  “Damn!” Oliver said, remembering his anger. He rose to his feet and thumped across the room, pushing men aside and muttering as he went.

  “Oliver,” Henry called. “Come back, forget the man.”

  But Oliver was already outside in Lombard Street. He saw Montagu far down the hill in his bright clothes, being carried away on a sedan chair. He shouted his name, and then set off in pursuit, floundering in the mud.

  Henry, watching from the door of the coffeehouse, shook his head and went back inside.

  9

  All morning long, Rose had been whispering to Fanny about marriage. Her first husband, Robert, had had Rose whenever he pleased for three entire years, day or night, standing up, lying down, sitting on his lap, bent over a wall in the rain while the horses watched. He had always stripped her naked, no matter what the place or the weather, crying, “Skin! I must have skin!”

  “His belt buckle dug into my poor stomach, I’d be lying on slimy wet stones or on the grass, itching terribly, he didn’t care,” Rose said. “All he could think about was spending, and then he’d want to spend again. In a way the belt buckle and the grass and the stones were a blessing because I could think about those things and not about what Robert was doing.”

  Rose had never experienced sexual desire, not even in her sleep; she did not believe that it existed in women. In men it seemed to be a sickness; they had a swelling, their faces twisted in what looked like pain but evidently was ecstasy, and then they went to sleep. The woman lived with shame for an hour afterward and with fear for a month.

  “The consolation is that you forget what it was like between-times,” Rose said. “After it stops hurting, it’s as if nothing has happened until it happens again.”

  “What about Oliver?” Fanny asked.

  “What about him?” Rose replied. “Let him go to the Widow’s.”

  She got out of bed, opened Fanny’s trunks and wardrobes, and began trying on clothes. Fanny watched her from beneath the covers. She knew what the sexual act involved; it happened in the streets between animals, and even between men and women, and she had often seen it. No woman had ever described it to her before, sparing no detail. As usual, Rose seemed to have no memory of what she had said five minutes after she had said it. She was smiling at herself in Fanchon’s looking glass.

  “I love your mirror so, Fanny,” she said. “May I borrow it, take it next door? There’s not a decent glass in that house. I hate it there.”

  “Ask Oliver to buy you one. He’s always buying you things.”

  “And now you know why. Can I borrow this one until he finds me another? I need a glass, Fanny. I must have one tonight.”

  Fanny did not want to let her take the mirror, but lending it was better than being coaxed.

  “All right. I’ll fetch Antoinette. She’ll carry it.”

  “But I don’t want to go yet,” Rose said. “Can you play for me? I could hear you playing last night all the while Oliver was at me. I should have gone mad if I hadn’t heard you.”

  Rose remained with Fanny until evening, and when at last she came inside her own house, with Antoinette and the mirror following behind, she found Oliver waiting beside a table piled high with presents.

  Rose took down a portrait of Oliver’s mother, who was a female version of her son, and stood it against the wall. “Ha
ng the glass here,” she said.

  Oliver obeyed.

  “That’s Fanny’s glass,” he said, looking at Rose’s reflection behind him as he spoke.

  “I’ve borrowed it,” Rose said. “Can you see me in the glass?”

  “Yes. Beautiful.”

  “Fanny says you must buy me another glass very soon so that she can have this one back again. It belonged to her mother. Was she as pretty as her picture?”

  “Prettier, but not so pretty as Fanny. Or you.”

  Oliver grinned as he talked, delighted to have Rose speaking to him so calmly. He had expected anger, tears, reproaches. That was why he had come home armed for the problems of matrimony.

  “Look, Rose,” he said, handing her a box.

  He waited for her to open it, but she did not. There were a dozen or more boxes, all different sizes, piled on the table in the hall. He had brought her hats, cloth for dresses, two silk scarves, three different boxes of sweetmeats, and a little jointed wooden doll that danced on a string.

  Rose’s mood changed as soon as she saw the gifts. She wouldn’t touch them or even look at them. Oliver opened the boxes one by one and offered them to her.

  “Look, Rose! Let’s have a smile.”

  She turned her unsmiling, wounded face away, as if nothing he could give her could interest her—much less make him worthy of her.

  Oliver thought she was teasing him. He’d never known a girl who didn’t like presents. “Come, Rose, try to be happy,” he said. “These aren’t dead rats I’m offering you.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if they were,” Rose murmured. “I remember my wedding night even if you don’t, you drunken beast.”

  “I may have had a bit too much,” Oliver said, “but a man only gets married once. Here, have a sweetmeat.”

  Rose turned her face away, squeezing her eyes shut as if he really had offered her a rodent. She sat in a chair with her hands folded in her lap. Oliver was sprawled on another chair between her and the door that led into the hall. He was in a husbandly state; Sir Cecil had been right, it happened to Oliver just by looking at her.