27
Incense
APRIL–JULY 1790
To be in England while winter gave way to spring, Marcus discovered, was to swing like a pendulum between opposing poles of misery and delight. Gallowglass had ferried them safely across the channel in January and shepherded them on to London, which was a sprawling monster of a city larger than Paris and dirtier, too. The filth running through the streets and floating in the river Thames froze, but it still gave off a scent that turned Marcus’s stomach.
So, too, did the sight of so many Redcoats strutting around St. James’s Palace and its nearby park. One night Marcus had fed off a drunken sot of an officer and found him both self-pitying and unappetizing. The experience did nothing to improve Marcus’s opinion of the British army.
Unlike Marat, who adored London and had many friends there, Marcus couldn’t be rid of the place quickly enough and was happy to leave the city for the countryside of Berkshire, where Mr. and Mrs. Graham would give them shelter. On the way, he had gawped like a bumpkin at the bulk of Windsor Castle. Marcus found the ancient fortress more imposing than Versailles, and had also admired the spires of Eton standing crisp and clear against a dusting of winter snow and the piercing winter-blue sky.
While London had failed to capture his heart, Berkshire’s twisting lanes, patchwork fields tipped with frost, and sprawling farmhouses brought to mind his home in Hadley. The familiar sights sparked his memories of living according to the cycles of nature rather than measuring the passage of time with ticking clocks and changing dates on newspapers.
Matthew escorted Marat and Marcus to the house of Mrs. Graham—who turned out to be the most notorious woman in England, and one of the cleverest, too. Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham had almost as many names as a de Clermont and just as much confidence. An autocratic lady near sixty with a high, domed forehead, a punctuation mark of a nose, ruddy cheeks, and a no-nonsense way of speaking, Mrs. Graham had scandalized polite society by marrying a surgeon less than half her age after the death of her first husband. William Graham was young, short, stout, and Scots. He doted on his wife and relished both her radical opinions and bluestocking tendencies.
“Fancy a walk, Marcus?” William said, poking his head into the library where Marcus was availing himself of the household’s impressive collection of medical books. “Come on. Some country air will do you good. Those books will still be here when you get back.”
“I’d love to,” Marcus said, closing the illustrated anatomy text. Now that it was April, Marcus could hear and smell the earth coming alive again after its winter sleep. He liked to listen to the frogs by the stream and measure the slow leafing out of the trees.
“We could always . . .” William moved his hand up and down in a gesture that suggested there would be drinking involved.
Marcus laughed. “If you’d like.”
They set out on what had become their customary route, putting Binfield House behind them and traveling south toward town. Ahead of them were the gates of an older and far grander residence than the new, redbrick build that the Grahams were renting.
“Matthew remembers staying there last century,” Marcus commented as they strolled past the E-shaped building with its tall, leaded windows and crooked chimneys. The Grahams were fully apprised of the way the world really worked, and Catharine had been a friend of both Fanny and Ysabeau for years, so Marcus was free to speak of such things with his hosts.
“Full of rot and woodworm, and birds nesting in the eaves.” Graham sniffed. “I’m glad to be living in a modern house, with sound windows and doors, and a chimney that won’t catch fire.”
Marcus made a noise of agreement, but truthfully he liked the charming old pile with its zigzag rooflines and exposed timberwork. His father had explained how the house was constructed from a mixture of wood and narrow bricks with stone casements for the windows. One of the unforeseen benefits of their forced exile was that Matthew was far more relaxed in England than he had been in either America or Paris.
Marcus and William circled west toward Tippen’s Wood. This was the vampires’ preferred hunting ground, though the wildlife was sparse at this time of year, and the bare branches didn’t provide much cover from curious human eyes. As a result, most of Marcus’s sustenance came from red wine and bits of raw game birds, supplemented with blood from the butcher. Marcus had grown accustomed to a more varied—and tastier—diet in Paris.
“How is Mrs. Graham this morning?” Marcus asked William. Catharine was suffering from a cold that had settled in her chest. William and Marcus had consulted on a cure and sent her to bed with one of Tom Buckland’s tisane recipes and a chest plaster made with mustard and herbs to ease her congestion.