Читаем Forever Amber полностью

When the baby was two weeks old he was christened with the single name—Bruce. It was customary to give a bastard his mother’s surname, but she could not use hers and would not use Luke Channell’s. Afterwards she had a christening feast, which was attended by Mother Red-Cap and Black Jack, Bess Columbine and Michael and Penelope Hill, an Italian nobleman who had fled his country for reasons he did not disclose and who knew no word of English, the coiner and his wife from the third floor, two men who accompanied Black Jack on his expeditions out of town—Jimmy the Mouth and Blueskin—and an assortment of cutpurses, bilks, and debtors. While the men drank and played cards the women sat and discussed pregnancy and miscarriages and abortions with the same ravening interest they had in Marygreen.

A week after that the woman Mother Red-Cap had hired to take the baby came for him. She was Mrs. Chiverton, a cottager’s wife from Kingsland, a tiny village lying out of London some two and a quarter miles, but almost four miles from Whitefriars. Amber liked and trusted her immediately, for she had known many women of her kind. She agreed to pay her ten pounds a year to feed and care for the baby, and gave her another five so that she could have him brought to see her whenever she wanted.

She did not wish to part with him at all and would have kept him there with her in Whitefriars if it had not been for Mother Red-Cap’s insistence that he would probably die in that unhealthy place. She loved him because he was her own—but perhaps even more because he was Bruce Carlton’s. Bruce had been gone now for almost eight months, and in spite of the violent feeling she still had for him, he had grown increasingly unreal to her. The baby, a moving breathing proof of his existence, was all that convinced her she had ever known him at all. He seemed to be a dream she had had, a wish that had almost, but not quite, come true.

“Let me know right away if he falls sick, won’t you?” she said anxiously as she put him into Mrs. Chiverton’s arms. “When will you bring him to see me?”

“Whenever ye say, mem.”

“Next Saturday? If it’s a good day?”

“Very well, mem.”

“Oh, please do! And you’ll keep him warm and never let him be hungry, won’t you?”

“Yes, mem. I will, mem.”

Black Jack went along to see her safely into a hackney, but when he came back Amber was sitting alone in a chair by the table, staring morosely into space. He sat down beside her and took her hands into his; his voice was teasing but sympathetic. “Here, sweetheart. What’s the good of all this moping and sighing? The little fellow’s in good hands, isn’t he? Lord, you wouldn’t want ’im to stay here. Would you now?”

Amber looked at him. “No, of course not. Well—” She tried a little smile.

“Now, that’s better! Look here—d’ye know what day ’this is?”

“No.”

“It’s the day before his Majesty’s coronation. He rides through the City on his way to the Tower! How would you like to go see ’im?”

“Oh, Black Jack!” Her whole face lighted eagerly and then suddenly collapsed into a discontented frown. “But we can’t—” She had come to feel that she was as much a prisoner here in Whitefriars as she had been in Newgate.

“Of course we can. I go into the City every day of my life. Hurry along now, into your rigging and we’ll be off. Bring your mask and wear your cloak,” he called after her, as she whirled and started out on a run.

It was the first time Amber had left Alsatia since she had come there two months and a half before, and she was almost as excited as she had been the first day she had seen London. After weeks of rain the sky was now blue and the air fresh and clean; there was a brisk breeze that carried the smell of the outlying fields into the city. The streets along which the King’s procession would pass had been covered with gravel and railed off on either side and the City companies and trainbands formed lines to keep back the eager pushing crowds. Magnificent triumphal arches had been erected at the corners of the four main streets and—as the year before—banners and tapestries floated from every house and women massed at the windows and balconies threw flowers.

Black Jack shepherded Amber through the crowd before him, elbowing one man aside, shoving his hand into the face of another, until finally they came to the very front. She dropped her mask—which was kept in place by a button held between the teeth—and could not stop to pick it up. Black Jack did not notice and in her own excitement she soon forgot that it was gone.

When they got to where they could see, the great gilt coaches, filled with noblemen in their magnificent Parliament robes, were turning slowly by. Amber stared at them with her eyes wide open, impressed as a child, and unconsciously she searched over each face, but did not see him. Lord Carlton had ridden the year before with the loyal Cavaliers returning from over the seas. But when the King approached she forgot even Bruce.