Pride and Percabeth

Chapter Nineteen

The Duke of Olympus hosted the county's annual autumn fox hunt. Nico was not much of a hunter but being His Grace's guest meant he was obligated to attend.
On the morning of the hunt, Nico went down to breakfast and found the rest of the castle's inmates listening to Lord Skye read from the newspaper. Miss Chase gasped and let go off the small, silver spoon she was using to mix cream into her coffee with such force that her cup tipped over and spilt hot, brown liquid onto the table cloth.
Nico took a seat and listened to what Lord Skye was reading.
Marie Antoinette, former queen of France, was the latest high profile victim of Madame la Guillotine. Nico knew her as a vain, frivolous woman who had spent France into ruin with her ostentatious gowns and wigs and her gambling addiction, and who gorged herself on cake and pastries while her subjects starved. At best, oblivious to their plight; at worst, uncaring. Whatever sins Antoinette may have committed in her life, she had paid for them now. She watched her husband, the well-meaning but bumbling and woefully ineffectual Louis XVI, be dragged off to his execution and their children ripped from her arms. The newspaper described her final days in a lonely cell in the Conciergerie prison and her tragic and pitiful but dignified death. She appeared at the guillotine as a wraith like figure with pale, bloodless skin and prematurely ashen hair and looked like a haggard old crone, through she was only seven-and-thirty. The once haughty and elegant Austrian beauty died having lost everyone she loved and knowing that her whole life had been in vain.

Miss McLean dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.
"Her poor children," she said. "I wonder what will become of them."
One of the footmen took a beefsteak and a pigeon breast out of a splendid meat pie which was that morning's breakfast and placed them on His Grace's plate- he had already eaten two servings.
His Grace raised a glass of port, his fourth drink in a row. His previous helpings of pigeon and beefsteak had been washed down with champagne, claret, and Moselle.
"My children," he said. "To the end of an era."

Nico had been given a skittish and bad tempered gelding named Mephistopheles to ride in the hunt. They quickly established a mutual dislike of each of other.
Mephistopheles was startled by the barking of the hounds, which could be heard from the roads leading into Skye-on-Styx. He started to rear and Nico had to lightly tap the horse's neck with his crop.
"Settle down, you worthless nag," Nico said, kicking Mephistopheles's flank.
Hazel road up alongside Nico. Her rapport with horses always amazed him. She handled Arion as if he were an extension of her.
"Morning, Hazel," Nico said to her. "How are you?"
"I've been having the nightmares again," she replied. 
Nico knew that the nightmares were memories from Hazel's life before she came to live in England, when she was a slave in Louisiana. He imagined that she had seen things which no one should have to, especially not such a young child.
"When I have nightmares, it usually helps if I write about it. When you bring them out into the light of day, they aren't so frightening."
Miss Chase came trotting down the lane alongside Lord Skye. The two of them were discussing, of all things, Homer's The Odyssey.
"Truly, My Lord," Miss Chase said. "You must admit that Odysseus's infidelities with Circe and Calypso are more forgivable when you take note that they are powerful sorceresses. They subdued him with enchantments and the threat of mischief towards his men. Odysseus cries himself to sleep every night while on Calypso's island. That does not sound like a man enjoying a love affair to me. I acknowledge that my sex is just as capable of cruelty towards your sex as you are towards us."
"I hope you won't scare away the foxes with all your blue stocking-ish prattle, Miss Chase," Lieutenant Jackson cut in.
He overtook them on his fine, black stallion.
"It's a wonder you even bother to open your mouth, Lieutenant Jackson. No one cares what you have to say."
"Come, Grace," he called to Lord Skye. "Let's leave this troublesome female behind. She makes me weary of her entire sex."
"Then womankind should rejoice," Miss Chase replied. "That they are no longer troubled by you."
She spurred her elegant, white mare and galloped down the lane, kicking up dust as she went.
"That harpy brings mischief wherever she goes," Lieutenant Jackson said. "Dear God, I would rather hear a thousand Barbary canons than listen to her voice. No pasha in all of Tripoli could vex me more."