Traitors Gate Read online

  “Don’t be absurd, child. Women have withdrawing rooms for such things.”

  “Then why do they have clubs for women at all?”

  “For those who don’t have their own withdrawing rooms, of course,” Mrs. Saxby said impatiently.

  “I don’t know any ladies who don’t have their own withdrawing rooms.”

  “Of course you don’t. Any lady who does not have her own withdrawing room is not fit to be in Society, and consequently, she is not,” Mrs. Saxby rejoined.

  And with that Miss Saxby had to be content.

  “Oh dear,” Dolly said when they were gone. “Poor George is finding being single something of a trial.” Further explanation was unnecessary.

  “I think it is being so very eligible that is the trial,” Vespasia said with a smile.

  “Of course you are perfectly right. Please do sit down.” Dolly waved vaguely at one of the pale blue chairs. “It seems like simply ages since I have seen you anywhere where it was possible to have a sensible conversation.”

  “That is because I have been to far too few such places.” Vespasia accepted the invitation. “Although I did enjoy the Duchess of Marlborough’s reception this week. I saw you in the distance, but of course one can never reach people at these affairs, except by accident. I did meet Susannah Chancellor. What an interesting creature. She reminded me of Beatrice Darnay. She isn’t one of the Worcestershire Darnays, is she?”

  “No! Not at all. I don’t know where her family comes from originally, but her father was William Dowling, of Coutts Bank.”

  “Indeed. I don’t think I know him.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t, my dear. He’s been gone several years now. Left a very considerable fortune. Susannah and Maude inherited it all, equally, I believe. No sons. Now Maude is dead, poor child, and her husband inherited it, along with the principal interest in the family banking business. Francis Standish. Do you know him?”

  “I believe I have met him,” Vespasia replied. “A distinguished-looking man, if I recall correctly. Very fine hair.”

  “That’s right. Merchant banker. That sort of power always gives men an air of confidence, which has its own attractions.” She settled a little more comfortably in her seat. “Of course his mother was related to the Salisburys, but I don’t know how, precisely.”

  “And a woman of the most unusual appearance, named Christabel Thorne …” Vespasia continued.

  “Ah, my dear!” Dolly laughed. “I think she is what is known as a ‘new woman’! Quite outrageous, of course, but most entertaining. I don’t approve. How could I? How could anyone with the least sense? It is really rather frightening.”

  “A new woman?” Vespasia said with interest. “Do you think so?”

  Dolly’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t you? If women start wanting to leave their homes and families, and carve out a totally new role for themselves, whatever is going to happen to society in general? No one can simply please themselves all the time. It is completely irresponsible. Did you see that fearful play of Mr. Ibsen’s? A Doll’s House, or some such thing. The woman simply walked out, leaving her husband and children, for no reason at all.”

  “I think she felt she had reason.” Vespasia was too old to care about being contentious. “He was excessively patronizing and treated her as a child, with no power or right to make her own decisions.”

  Dolly laughed.

  “For heaven’s sake, my dear, most men are like that. One simply finds one’s own way ’round it. A little flattery, a little charm, and a great deal of tact to his face, and disobedience once his attention is elsewhere and most things can be achieved.”

  “She did not want to have to work for what she felt was every woman’s right.”

  “You are sounding like a ‘new woman’ yourself!”

  “Certainly not. I am a very old woman.” Vespasia changed the subject. “What does this Christabel Thorne do that is so radical? She has not left her home, I’m sure.”

  “Far worse than that.” Now there was real disapproval in Dolly’s face; the laughter had gone entirely. “She has some sort of an establishment which prints and distributes the most detailed literature encouraging women to educate themselves and attempt to enter the professions. I ask you! Who on earth is going to employ a woman lawyer, or architect, or judge, or a woman physician? And it is all quite pointless. Men will never tolerate it anyway. But of course she will not listen.”

  “Extraordinary,” Vespasia said with as little expression in her voice as she could manage. “Quite extraordinary.”

  They got no further with the subject because another caller arrived, and although it was well past four o’clock, it was apparent that Vespasia should take her leave.

  The last person she visited was Nobby Gunne. She found her in her garden staring at the flag irises, a distracted expression on her face. Curiously, she looked anxious and yet inwardly she had a kind of happiness which lent her skin a glow.

  “How nice to see you,” she said, turning from the iris bed and coming forward. “I am sure it must be teatime. May I send for some for you? You will stay?”

  “Of course,” Vespasia accepted.

  They walked side by side across the wide sunny sweep of the lawn, the occasional longer spikes of the uncut edges catching their skirts. A bumblebee flew lazily from one early pink rose to another.

  “There is something about an English summer garden,” Nobby said quietly. “And yet I find myself thinking more and more often of Africa.”

  “Surely you don’t wish to go back there now, do you?” Vespasia was surprised. Nobby was past the age when such an enterprise would be either easy to arrange or comfortable in execution. What was an adventure at thirty could be an ordeal at fifty-five.

  “Oh no! Not in the slightest.” Nobby smiled. “Except in the occasional daydream. Memory can be misleadingly sweet. No, I worry about it, most particularly after the conversation we had the other evening. There is so much money involved in it now, so much profit to be made from settlement and trade. The days of exploration to discover a place, simply because no white man had seen it before, are all past. Now it is a matter of treaties, mineral rights and soldiers. There’s been so much blood already.” She looked sad, gazing at the honeysuckle spilling over the low wall they were passing.

  “Nobody talks about missionaries anymore. I haven’t heard anyone even mention Moffatt or Livingstone in a couple of years. It is all Stanley and Cecil Rhodes now, and money.” She stared up at the elm trees shining and whispering in the sun, and below them the climbing white roses beginning to open. It was all intensely English. Africa with its burning heat and sun and dust seemed like a fairy story not real enough to matter.

  But looking at Nobby’s face, Vespasia could see the depth of her emotion, and how deeply she still cared.

  “Times do change,” she said aloud. “I am afraid that after the idealists come the realists, the practical profiteers. It has always been so. Perhaps it is inevitable.” She walked quietly beside Nobby and stopped in front of a massive lupine whose dozen spikes were already showing pink. “Be grateful that you were privileged to see the best days and be part of them.”

  “If that were all”—Nobby frowned—“if it were only a matter of personal regret, I would let it go. But it really does matter, Vespasia.” She looked around, her eyes dark. “If settlement of Africa is done badly, if we sow the wind, we will reap the whirlwind for centuries to come, I promise you.” Her face was so grim, so full of undisguised fear, that Vespasia felt a chill in the summer garden and the cascades of blossoms seemed bright and far away, and even the warmth on her skin lacked a sense of reality.

  “What exactly is it you think will happen?” she asked.

  Nobby stared into the distance. She was not marshaling her thoughts; that had obviously already happened. She was seeing some inner vision, and the sight appalled her.

  “If some of Linus Chancellor’s plans go forward, and the men he is allied with, who are putting up enor
mous sums of money to colonize the interior … I’m speaking about Mashonaland, Matabeleland, the shores of Lake Nyasa, or on towards Equatoria … as they plan to, because they believe there is unlimited gold there,” she replied, “then hordes of people will follow who are not in the least interested in Africa or its peoples, or in developing the land for themselves, or their children, but simply to rape it of its minerals.” A butterfly drifted past them and settled on an open flower.

  “There’ll be profiteers of every kind, swindlers and cheats will be the least of them; there’ll be violent men with their own private armies, and one by one they will draw in the native tribal chiefs. The internal wars are bad enough now, but they are only armed with spears. Think of it when some have guns and others don’t.”

  She turned to face Vespasia. “And don’t underestimate the Germans. They have a very powerful presence in Zanzibar, and are keen to press inland. There’s been fearful bloodshed there already. And that may not be the worst of it. The Arab slavers will protect their interests by force, if they can. They have risen against the Germans once already.”

  “Surely the government is aware of all this?” Vespasia asked dubiously.

  Nobby turned back to the garden, shrugging her shoulders very slightly. “I don’t know if they believe it. It all seems different when you talk about it in England, so many names on paper, secondhand accounts, and all very far away. It’s different when you’ve been there, and loved it, when you’ve known the people. They are not all noble savages with clear eyes and simple hearts.”

  They were walking again very slowly over the soft grass. She laughed jerkily. “They can be as devious and exploitative as any white man, and just as despotic. They can sell their enemies into slavery to any Arab who will buy them. It is the customary way to deal with prisoners of war. I don’t think it’s the morality that’s the difference; it’s the degree of power.” She blinked hard. “It’s our modern inventions, gunpowder, steel, our massive organization … we can do so much more evil, or good, with it. And I am so afraid with the greed for profit, the hunger for empire, it will be mostly evil we do.”

  “Is there anything to be done to prevent it?” Vespasia asked her. “Or at least to moderate it?”

  “That is what troubles me,” Nobby replied, starting to walk away from the border back across the lawn towards the shade of the cedar tree. They both sat down on the white bench.

  “I am uncertain, and confused at present, but I feel that there is. I have spoken a little lately to Mr. Kreisler. He is very recently returned, and I respect his opinions.” There was a very faint trace of color in her cheeks, and she did not look at Vespasia. “He was familiar with Abushiri, the leader of the rebellion against the Germans in Zanzibar. I gather it was principally a group of ivory and slave traders, who were beginning to feel restricted in their activities, but it was put down very messily. I confess, I know very little. Mr. Kreisler only mentioned it in passing, but it left me with an increasing anxiety.”

  Vespasia felt it too, but for different reasons. She was aware of the fall of Otto von Bismarck, the brilliant chancellor of Germany, the virtual creator of the new unified country. His nominal master, the old Kaiser, had been ill at the time, and died very shortly afterwards, of cancer of the throat. Now the sole ruler of the young and enormously vigorous state was the youthful, headstrong, supremely confident Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. German ambitions would know no cautious or restraining hand.

  “I remember Livingstone’s early years,” Nobby said with a self-conscious smile. “That makes me sound old, doesn’t it? How excited everyone was then. Nobody said anything about gold or ivory. It was all a matter of discovering people, finding new and wonderful sights, great cataracts like the Victoria Falls.” She stared up through the dark green boughs of the cedar at the brilliance of the sky. “I met someone who had seen it once, just a few months earlier. I was standing outside in the evening. It was still hot, really hot. England is never close to the skin like that, touching, breathing heat.

  “All the acacia trees were flat-topped against a sky burning with stars, and I could smell the dust and the dry grass. It was full of insects singing, and half a mile away at the water hole, I heard a lioness roar. It was so still, I felt as if I could have reached out and touched her.”

  There was a sadness close to tears in Nobby’s face. Vespasia did not interrupt her.

  “The man was an explorer who had set out with a party. A white man,” Nobby went on quietly, almost as if to herself. “He was ill with a fever when he reached us. He staggered into our camp so exhausted he could barely stand. He was wasted until he was skin and bone, but his face lit up when he spoke and his eyes were like a child’s. He had seen it some three months before … the greatest cataract in the world, he said … as if the ocean itself poured off the cliffs of the sky in an endless torrent, leaping and roaring into a chasm of which one could not see the bottom for the white spume flying and the endless rainbows. The river had a dozen arms, and every one of them flung itself into that gorge and the jungle clung to the sides and leaned over the brink in a hundred different places.” She fell silent.

  “What happened to him?” Vespasia asked.

  Somewhere above them a bird was singing in the cedar tree.

  “He died of fever two years later,” Nobby answered. “But please God the falls will be there till the end of time.” She stood up again and began to walk back across the grass towards the house, Vespasia behind her. “I’m sure tea must be ready. Would you care for some now?”

  “Yes please.” Vespasia caught up with her.

  “Mr. Kreisler hunted with Selous, you know,” Nobby continued.

  “Who is Selous?”

  “Oh! Frederick Courtney Selous, a marvelous hunter and scout,” Nobby replied. “Mr. Kreisler told me Mr. Selous is the one leading the Rhodes column north to settle Zambezia.” The shadow was back in her face, and yet there was a lift in her voice, a subtle alteration when she spoke Kreisler’s name. “I know Mr. Chancellor is backing Rhodes. And of course Francis Standish’s bank.”

  “And Mr. Kreisler disapproves,” Vespasia said. It was not really a question.

  “I fear he has reason,” Nobby answered, looking across at Vespasia suddenly. “I think he loves Africa genuinely, not for what he hopes to gain, but for itself, because it is wild and strange, beautiful and terrible and very, very old.” There was no need to say how much she admired him for it; it shone in her face and whispered in the gentleness of her voice.

  Vespasia smiled and said nothing. They continued side by side across the lawn, their skirts brushing the grass, and went up the steps and in through the French window to take tea.

  There was a charity bazaar the day after which Vespasia had promised to attend. It was being conducted by an old friend, and in spite of disliking such events, she felt obliged in kindness to support her efforts, although she would far rather simply have donated the money. However she thought Charlotte might find it entertaining, so she dispatched her carriage to fetch her if she wished.

  As it turned out, it was not at all as she had expected, and the moment she and Charlotte had arrived, she knew it would at least be entertaining, at best possibly informative. Her friend, Mrs. Penelope Kennard, had omitted to tell her that it was a Shakespearean bazaar, where everyone who had any official part in the proceedings dressed as a character from a Shakespearean play. As a result they were greeted at the garden gate by a very handsome Henry V, who bade them welcome in ringing tones. And almost immediately after they left him, they were assaulted by a villainous Shylock demanding money or a pound of flesh.

  Startled only for a moment, Vespasia good-naturedly handed him a handsome entry fee for herself and Charlotte.

  “Good gracious, whatever next?” she murmured as they passed out of earshot and towards a stall where a young society matron was attired as Titania, Queen of the Fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and looking very fetching indeed. A great deal more of her was visi
ble than even the most daring evening gown would have displayed. Lengths of gauze were swathed around her, leaving arms, shoulders and waist bare, and much more could be guessed at beneath its diaphanous folds. There were two young gentlemen bickering over the price of a lavender pomander, and several more waited eagerly to take their turn.

  “Effective!” Charlotte said with reluctant admiration.

  “Oh very,” Vespasia agreed, smiling to herself. “The last time Penelope did one of these bazaars it was all characters from Mr. Dickens, and not nearly so much fun. They all looked rather alike to me. Look! There! Do you see Cleopatra selling pincushions?”

  Charlotte followed Vespasia’s indication and saw a remarkably handsome young woman with dark hair and eyes, a rather Grecian nose, perhaps a trifle high at the bridge for beauty, and a willful, highly individual mouth. It was a countenance that could indeed have belonged to a woman used to power and an extraordinary mixture of self-discipline and self-indulgence. She was at that moment offering a small, embroidered, lace-edged pincushion to a gentleman in an immaculate frock coat and striped trousers. He looked like a city banker or a dealer in stocks and securities.

  A bishop in traditional gaiters walked by slowly, smiling in the sun and nodding first to one side then the other. His eyes lingered for several moments upon Cleopatra, and he very nearly stopped and bought a pincushion, before judicious caution prevailed and he continued on his way towards Titania, still smiling.

  Vespasia glanced at Charlotte; words were unnecessary.

  They walked gently on between the stalls where imaginatively dressed young women were selling sweetmeats, flowers, ornaments, ribbons, cakes and pictures, and yet others were offering games to play for various prizes. She saw one booth decked out in curtains of shadowy material with silver stars pinned to them, and letters proclaiming that for a sixpence the witches of Macbeth would tell your fortune and recite to you all the great achievements which lay in your future. There was a queue of giggling girls waiting their turn to go in, and even a couple of young men, pretending they were there simply to accompany them, and yet with a spark of interest in their faces.