Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Her reaction was swift, partly through fear and her own violent instincts of self-preservation, partly because all control over her mind had been gone long before this. Wild as an animal she began to kick and scratch and pound at him with her fists, shrieking with rage, cursing him with every vile word she knew. Over and over again she screamed that she hated him. For the moment her lust for revenge was so powerful she would have killed him if she could—all the pain she had ever suffered because of him, all the jealous hatred she had for Corinna had seized hold of her and made her something evil, dangerous, demoniacal.

After his first swift outburst of fury Bruce had instantly recovered himself. Now he was only trying to bring her to her senses, though the strength begot of her rage made it almost impossible for him to control her.

“Amber!” he shouted, trying to break through her deafness and blindness. “Amber, for God’s sake—be still!”

One side of his face was raw and bleeding and long claw marks showed where she had raked her nails across his cheek. His wig and hat had fallen off, Amber’s gown was ripped across one breast and her hair had come undone. Corinna stood watching them, motionless with horror, sick with dread and humiliation.

Suddenly he seized Amber by the back of her hair and gave a violent jerk that snapped her neck so hard the vertebrae cracked. She let out an agonized scream and the next instant her fist smashed into the side of his face, bruising her knuckles and knocking his head backward. His eyes turned green and he seized her neck in both hands, his strong lean fingers began to close in. Her face darkened. Frantically she tore at his hands, her tongue was forced out and her eyes seemed to burst from the sockets. She tried to scream.

Corinna rushed toward them. “Bruce!” she cried. “Bruce! You’re killing her!”

He seemed not to hear but Corinna dragged at his arms, hammered with her fists against him, and all at once he let her go. Amber dropped like a sack. With a look of unutterable disgust on his face—disgust which seemed as much against himself as Amber—he turned away, holding up his hands, the fingers still bent, and he stared at them as though they did not belong to him. Corinna was watching him, tenderly, with a pity that was almost maternal.

“Bruce—” she said at last, her voice very soft. “Bruce—I think you must send for the midwife. The pains come often now—”

He stared at her dully, slow realization spreading over his face. “You’re having pains—Oh, Corinna!” There was a sound of almost agonized remorse in his voice. Suddenly he picked her up in his arms and walked into the other room to the bed. There he laid her down. The blood on his shirt and coat had smeared her gown and the side of her cheek. His hand reached down to wipe it away; then swiftly he turned and ran out of the room.

For two or three minutes Amber lay senseless on the floor. As she began to regain consciousness it seemed to her that she lay in a warm, soft and comforting bed; she tried to pull the blankets about her. It was several moments longer before she was conscious enough to remember where she was and what had happened. Then she tried to sit up. The blood thumped heavily in her ears and eyes, her throat ached and she felt dazed and stupid. Very slowly she dragged herself to her feet and she was standing there, almost as though hung from a hook, her head drooping, when Bruce came into the room again. She looked up and he stopped for a moment beside her.

“Get out of here,” he said. He spoke softly, between his teeth. “Get out.”

FOR THE NEXT several days Amber scarcely left her bedroom in Ravenspur House. Visitors were turned away and she did not go once to the Palace. Someone started a rumour that she had been poisoned by Lady Carlton and was dying. Others said she was recovering from an abortion. Someone else insisted she was suffering from the effects of her latest perversion. Amber would not have cared no matter what they said—but when Charles sent to inquire she told him she had a severe attack of ague.

Most of the time she merely lay on the bed, her face unpainted and her hair in tangled snarls. There were dirty circles about her eyes and her skin was sallow; she had been eating too little and drinking too much. Her tongue felt thick and leathery and had a nasty taste. She thought she might as well be dead.

She had known in the past dark bitter moments of loneliness, self-distrust, desolation—but this was something more. Whatever she had hoped for the future, whatever she held dear in the present had been lost that day at Almsbury House. In only a few minutes she had destroyed everything, and the destruction had been complete; there seemed nothing left on which to build. Even her energy, the intense vitality which had never failed, now seemed dissipated.

When Buckingham tried to interest her in his latest plot he found her, to his annoyance and surprise, indifferent almost to apathy. To get any response at all he had to offer twice what he had intended. But with his usual early enthusiasm he was prepared to squander all that remained of his fortune for this most dark and fantastic of all his schemes. It was his intention to poison Baron Arlington.

Amber heard him explain the plan with mounting if half-reluctant admiration. At the end she gave a mock shudder. “Lord, but your Grace is an ingenious murderer! Then how d’you plan to rid yourself of me?”

Buckingham smiled blandly. “Get rid of you, madame? I protest. Why should I? You’re far too useful to me.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “I doubt not you’d rather see my head stuck on a pole over London Bridge than your own.”

“Bah! His Majesty wouldn’t put you to trial if you murdered his own brother. He’s far too tender of any woman he’s ever laid with. But don’t trouble yourself, madame—I’m no such clumsy contriver as to endanger either of us.”

Amber did not argue with him on that point, but she knew well enough why he could not manage the business without her —he wanted a scapegoat should anything go wrong. And she was, furthermore, the one woman then at Court most likely to be able to wheedle the King into thinking or pretending to think that his Lordship had died from natural causes. If she failed, then it was she who must suffer the consequences.

But Amber did not expect to fail. Almost by the time he had told her what his plan was she had another of her own. The Duke’s scheme was a challenge to which her own ingenuity could not but rise and she began to shed some of her paralyzing torpor. She thought she could see a way to deceive the Duke, outwit the Baron, and make herself a great sum of money at very little risk.

Buckingham delivered to her the twenty-five hundred pounds he had promised—the other half to be paid when the Baron lay safe in his grave—and Amber sent for Shadrac Newbold to come get it. She did not intend to chance having his Grace steal it back. Then she went to keep the appointment she had made with Arlington.

It was near midnight when she left the Palace in a clothes-hamper borne by two porters, covered with her own soiled smocks and petticoats which were supposedly being carried to her laundress. A moment later Nan came out the same door. She was dressed in the clothes and jewels Amber had had on earlier that day and she wore a wig the colour of Amber’s hair; her face was covered with a vizard. A man who had been loitering about that entrance since nightfall looked after the hamper as if undecided whether he should follow it or not—but when Nan appeared, climbed into Amber’s great coach and went off, he whistled to signal his own coach and followed her instead.

Nan took a leisurely roundabout course across town to Camomile Street, giggling as she watched the Duke’s spy try to keep at a discreet distance without losing sight of her. He waited outside a lodging-house for her for three hours and when she had gone inquired of the landlady who lived there. On being told that the apartment was taken by Mr. Harris, a young actor of the Duke’s Theatre, he went to make his report to Buckingham, who sat picking his teeth with a gold toothpick and meditatively sucking air through them, amused that the Duchess should be consorting with such low creatures after all the trouble she had taken to rise above them.

Amber, meanwhile, was carried to an obscure little courtyard in one of the festering alleys of Westminster. The porters had some difficulty getting their burden up to the dirty little third-floor tenement lodging, and Amber alternately held her breath and cursed as she felt the hamper tip, slide, thump on each step. But at last they set her down and went out. Hearing the door close she knocked up the top of the hamper, flung off the covering linen and drew a deep breath. She was just climbing out when Arlington entered from an adjoining chamber—his black cloak swept almost to the floor, his hat was pulled low over his eyes and he held a vizard in one hand.

“The time’s short, my lord,” said Amber, untangling a petticoat from about her shoulders and neck and throwing it aside. “I’ve got some information of great value—I’ll give it you for five thousand pound.”

Arlington’s expression did not alter. “That’s very civil of you, madame. But five thousand is a considerable sum. I don’t think I can—”

Impatiently Amber interrupted him. “I’m no mercer, my lord, to let you run on tick. My payment must be cash. But maybe we can strike up a bargain. I’ll tell, you part of what I know now and if you pay me tomorrow I’ll take care the plot miscarries. If you don’t—” Lightly she shrugged, and the implication was that some very unpleasant misfortune would befall him.