The Talisman Ring

One

Sir Tristram Shield, arriving at Lavenham Court in the wintry dusk, was informed at the door that his great-uncle was very weak, not expected to live many more days out. He received these tidings without comment, but as the butler helped him to take off his heavy-caped driving-coat, he inquired in an unemotional voice: ‘Is Mr Lavenham here?’

‘At the Dower House, sir,’ replied the butler, handing the coat and the high-crowned beaver hat to a footman. He nodded austere dismissal to this underling, and added with a slight cough: ‘His lordship has been a little difficult, sir. So far his lordship has not received Mr Lavenham.’

He paused, waiting for Sir Tristram to inquire after Mademoiselle de Vauban. Sir Tristram, however, merely asked to be conducted to his bedchamber, that he might change his dress before being admitted to his great-uncle’s presence.

The butler, as well aware as everyone else at the Court of the reason of Sir Tristram’s sudden arrival, was disappointed at this lack of interest, but reflected that Sir Tristram, after all, had never been one to show what he was thinking. He led the way in person across the hall to the oak stairway and went with Sir Tristram up to the Long Gallery. Here, on one side, portraits of dead Lavenhams hung, and, on the other, tall, square-headed mullioned windows looked south over a well-timbered park to the Downs. The silence of the house was disturbed by the rustle of a skirt and the hasty closing of a door at one end of the Gallery. The butler had a shrewd suspicion that Mademoiselle de Vauban, more curious than Sir Tristram, had been waiting in the Gallery to obtain a glimpse of him. As he opened the door into one of the bed-chambers he cast a glance at Shield, and said: ‘His lordship has seen no one but the doctor, sir – once, and Mamzelle Eustacie, of course.’

That dark, harsh face told him nothing. ‘Yes?’ said Shield.

It occurred to the butler that perhaps Sir Tristram might not know why he had been summoned into Sussex. If that were so there was no saying how he might take it. He was not an easy man to drive, as his great-uncle had found more than once in the past. Ten to one there might be trouble.

Sir Tristram’s voice interrupted these reflections. ‘Send my man up to me, Porson, and inform his lordship of my arrival,’ he said.

The butler bowed and withdrew. Sir Tristram walked over to the window, and stood looking out over the formal gardens to the woods beyond, still dimly visible through the gathering twilight. There was a sombre frown in his eyes, and his mouth was compressed in a way that made it appear more grim than usual. He did not turn when the door opened to admit his valet, accompanied by one footman carrying his cloak-bag, and another bearing two gilded candelabra, which he set down on the dressing-table. The sudden candlelight darkened the prospect outside. After a moment Shield came away from the window to the fireplace and stood leaning his arm along the high mantelshelf, and looking down at the smouldering logs. The footman drew the curtains across the windows and went softly away. Jupp, the valet, began to unpack the contents of the cloak-bag, and to lay out upon the bed an evening coat and breeches of mulberry velvet, and a Florentine waistcoat. Sir Tristram stirred the logs in the grate with one top-booted foot. Jupp glanced at him sideways wondering what was in the wind to make him look so forbidding. ‘You’ll wear powder, sir?’ he suggested, setting the pounce-box and the pomatum down on the dressing-table.

‘No.’

Jupp sighed. He had already learned of Mr Lavenham’s presence at the Dower House. It seemed probable that the Beau might come up to the Court to visit his cousin, and Jupp, knowing how skilled was Mr Lavenham’s gentleman in the arrangement of his master’s locks, would have liked for his pride’s sake to have sent his own master down to dinner properly curled and powdered. He said nothing, however, but knelt down to pull off Sir Tristram’s boots.

Half an hour later Shield, summoned by Lord Lavenham’s valet, walked down the Gallery to the Great Chamber, and went in unannounced.

The room, wainscoted with oak and hung with crimson curtains, was warmed by a leaping fire and lit by as many as fifty candles in branching candelabra. At the far end a vast four-poster bed was set upon a slight dais. In it, banked up with pillows, covered with a quilt of flaming brocade, wearing an exotic bedgown and the powdered wig without which no one but his valet could ever remember to have seen him, was old Sylvester, ninth Baron Lavenham.

Sir Tristram paused on the threshold, dazzled momentarily by the blaze of unexpected light. The grimness of his face was lessened by a slight sardonic smile as his eyes took in the magnificence and the colour about him. ‘Your death-bed, sir?’ he inquired.

A thin chuckle came from the four-poster. ‘My death-bed,’ corroborated Sylvester with a twinkle.

Sir Tristram walked across the floor to the dais. A wasted hand on which a great ruby ring glowed was held out to him. He took it, and stood holding it, looking down into his great-uncle’s parchment-coloured face, with its hawk-nose, and bloodless lips, and its deep-sunk brilliant eyes. Sylvester was eighty, and dying, but he still wore his wig and his patches, and clasped in his left hand his snuff-box and laced handkerchief.

Sylvester returned his great-nephew’s steady look with one of malicious satisfaction. ‘I knew you’d come,’ he remarked. He withdrew his hand from the light clasp about it and waved it towards a chair which had been set on the dais. ‘Sit down.’ He opened his snuff-box and dipped in his finger and thumb. ‘When did I see you last?’ he inquired, shaking away the residue of the snuff and holding an infinitesimal pinch to one nostril.

Sir Tristram sat down, full in the glare of a cluster of candles on a torchère pedestal. The golden light cast his profile into strong relief against the crimson velvet bed-curtains. ‘It must have been about two years ago, I believe,’ he answered.

Sylvester gave another chuckle. ‘A loving family, ain’t we?’ He shut his snuff-box and dusted his fingers with his handkerchief. ‘That other great-nephew of mine is here,’ he remarked abruptly.

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘Seen him?’

‘No.’

‘You will,’ said Sylvester. ‘I shan’t.’

‘Why not?’ asked Shield, looking at him under his black brows.

‘Because I

don’t want to,’ replied Sylvester frankly. ‘Beau Lavenham! I was Beau Lavenham in my day, but d’ye suppose that I decked myself out in a green coat and yellow pantaloons?’

‘Probably not,’ said Shield.

‘Damned smooth-spoken fellow!’ said Sylvester. ‘Never liked him. Never liked his father either. His mother used to suffer from the vapours. She suffered from them – whole series of ’em! – when she wanted me to let her have the Dower House.’

‘Well, she got the Dower House,’ said Shield dryly.

‘Of course she did!’ said Sylvester snappishly, and relapsed into one of the forgetful silences of old age. A log falling out on to the hearth recalled him. He opened his eyes again and said: ‘Did I tell you why I wanted you?’

Sir Tristram had risen and gone over to the fire to replace the smoking log. He did not answer until he had done so, and then he said in his cool, disinterested voice: ‘You wrote that you had arranged a marriage for me with your granddaughter.’

The piercing eyes gleamed. ‘It don’t please you much, eh?’

‘Not much,’ admitted Shield, coming back to the dais.

‘It’s a good match,’ offered Sylvester. ‘I’ve settled most of the unentailed property on her, and she’s half French, you know – understands these arrangements. You can go your own road. She’s not at all like her mother.’

‘I never knew her mother,’ said Shield discouragingly.

‘She was a fool!’ said Sylvester. ‘Never think she could be a daughter of mine. She eloped with a frippery Frenchman: that shows you. What was his damned name?’

‘De Vauban.’

‘So it was. The Vidame de Vauban. I forget when he died. Marie died three years ago, and I went over to Paris – a year later, I think, but my memory’s not what it was.’

‘A little more than a year later, sir.’